


What Immortal Hand or Eye

by profoundbondbusiness



Series: Immortal Bonds [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dehumanizing of People, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Gore, Kidnapping, Mentions of Substance Abuse (Demon's Blood), Non-sexual dub-con, Pagan Rituals, Profanity, Violence, human sacrifices, thesamifercommunity big bang 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 18:14:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2438246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profoundbondbusiness/pseuds/profoundbondbusiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam wants nothing to do with Lucifer or his games. He's too busy trying to earn back his brother's trust, get clean and save the world.  Lucifer isn't backing off - he's hell bent on proving to Sam that, despite first impressions, he's not the Devil he thinks he knows.  As Sam struggles to hold his world together and dodge the forces of heaven and hell, Lucifer uses every method of temptation in his arsenal to get him to want to say yes.  Sam’s unquenchable curiosity is proving to be his weakness.  It would be much easier to shut Lucifer out if he wasn’t so fascinated by all of the heavenly secrets he willingly reveals.  The more he learns about their bond as host and vessel, and the more he feels its effects, the harder it is to pull away.  Add in pagan rituals, the wrath of a vengeful goddess, and a certain devious trickster and things might just get out of hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN: So I didn't get the chance to add this earlier but regardingrinth on tumblr made me some lovely fan art for this fic. Here's the link: http://regardingrinth.tumblr.com/post/99730270156/what-immortal-hand-or-eye-by-profoundbondbusiness, so go check it out.

**Chapter One**  
After the day he had, all Sam could focus on was how tired he was. Not only because of the physical and emotional beating Zachariah had dealt them. He could no longer deal with Dean's attitude. 

He was sick of not knowing where they stood with each other. One minute everything was fine, and the next he was overhearing phone conversations with Bobby. The topics ranged from Ruby to Lucifer, and he sounded as bitter and worn down as Sam felt. Dean was keeping a careful tally of all his mistakes, their recent adventure in heaven being the latest mark. 

Sam understood that he upset Dean because the heaven he saw didn't include anyone from his family. He could see how that looked to him, but the ones they traveled through allowed him to forget. There was nothing to remind him of hunting or what was happening in his life. No Dean also meant no reminders of that horrible voice mail. Sam had been on edge the entire night, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It seemed like no matter what Sam did, Dean just couldn't forgive him. It had been months since that day in St. Mary’s Convent. He had spent that time trying to fix the mess he created by giving Lucifer his freedom. It wasn’t easy because he had no idea what to do. He was trying, but Dean didn’t see it. Hell, most of the time civility was too much to hope for. Not that he could blame him. He couldn't even forgive himself most of the time.

Sam felt the glare he received as his brother walked out of the bathroom. Dean, after turning the light off, got into bed and rolled away from him. It took a few minutes, but his breathing slowed to steady, soft snores. Once he was sure Dean was asleep, he drifted himself. His last thought was about the amulet he pulled out of the trash can, currently in his jean pocket. It was heavy with memories and guilt.

A few minutes later, Sam opened his eyes only to slam them shut when he realized the light was on. He rolled over to ask Dean what was going on but the bed was empty. Sam sat up cautiously; his hunter instincts kicking in. He took stock of the room, trying to see what was different. There was no one else there, but the bathroom door was cracked open.

Sliding his hand under the pillow, he went to grab his gun but it didn't connect with cool metal. Annoyed couldn’t even begin to describe how he felt. His gun was always under his pillow when he went to bed. At that moment, the door opened the rest of the way and Lucifer walked out of the bathroom. He was surprised; he hadn't seen Lucifer since they tried to kill him with the colt.

"Hello Sam," Lucifer said in that friendly, borderline condescending tone he always used.

"What do you want?" Sam growled out, glaring at Lucifer. He did his best to ignore the light tremble running through him.

Lucifer ignored him, taking a hostile step forward. "Who was it?" His eyes narrowed and his lips were pulled back in a snarl.

"What are you talking about?" Sam snapped, clenching his hands into fists. 

"Who was it that shot you." 

Sam, instead of replying to Lucifer’s question, stared at him in confusion. Why would Lucifer care who killed him - he just wanted to use him. He was alive, so none of his plans would be affected. 

Furthermore, Sam wondered how Lucifer even found out. While he knew the angels had been working with demons to set Lucifer free, he didn’t think they were giving him field reports. How would they be able to stay ahead of Lucifer in this weird chess match they were competing in?

"How do you know about that?" 

"I felt you dying, which weakened the power of the Enochian sigil you have hiding you. As soon as the power was weak enough, I located you through the connection we have and tried to heal you. I failed though. I had to watch you die.”

"What....what do you mean connection?" Sam asked.  
Lucifer seemed in no rush to answer him. He only stared, taking stalk of him. It was an uncomfortable silence, though Sam was too nervous to break it. 

“The connection we share as angel and vessel of course.” Lucifer’s voice broke the silence that had permeated the room.

“Right, of course.” Sam was disappointed Lucifer hadn’t said more than that.

“Let’s get back on topic. Who was it that killed you?”

“Look I'm not telling you. So just give up already.”

“Sam, you are my vessel. I'm not going to let some humans get away with harming what is mine.” Lucifer’s voice had a dark edge to it as he moved closer to Sam.

"Yours?" Sam asked, incredulous. "Are you kidding me? Just because I'm your true vessel doesn't mean that I belong to you!"

Lucifer clenched his hands into fists as his face clouded over. Before he could respond, the lights flickered and went out. When they came back on, Lucifer was gone. Sam was now alone in the room. He didn’t have time to wonder where Lucifer went, though, because he found himself lying on his back. Clenching his eyes shut, he tried to get used to his new position. After a couple of seconds, Sam opened his eyes and saw Castiel looming over him. Dean was standing about two feet behind him.

"What....what's going on?" Sam asked, while sitting up in his bed.

"Dean woke up to you mumbling in your sleep, and tried to wake you. When that didn't work, he called me. I tried to wake you up, but it took several minutes. I suspect I had some interference," Cas said, with a stern look that Sam hadn’t seen in a while. He had started acting more friendly after their trip to the past, so Sam wasn’t quite sure how to react.  
He almost didn’t want to tell them what happened. Sam could imagine all too well what Dean would say if he found out. It had been too easy to forget Dean’s ability to hold a grudge when speaking with Lucifer. The moment Dean found out, this would be another mark against him. Just one more thing he had to atone for. 

“Lucifer dropped by for a visit. He wanted to know who killed me earlier - but I refused to tell him.” Sam added that last part when he noticed Dean open his mouth at the mention of Lucifer. 

Before Cas or Dean could say something to him - or lecture him - Sam laid down so he was facing away from them. He was hoping they would get the message and leave him alone so he could sleep. When footsteps filled the room, he knew luck was finally on his side. Sam could make out Cas and Dean through the motel door. Their discussion was indistinct, but heated. A few minutes later, with a familiar flap of wings, Castiel left.

Once it was dark, Sam relaxed, knowing he avoided discussing Lucifer for now. However, sleep still escaped him. Just because he managed to postpone that conversation with Dean did not mean Sam could escape thinking about it. 

He replayed the encounter over and over, trying to understand Lucifer's fixation. When that proved fruitless, he stewed on what he learned about vessels. It was fascinating, even though Sam (as a rule) tried to avoid thinking about his connection to Lucifer. Denial made it easier to say no. Of course, Lucifer was now playing on one of his weaknesses, even if he didn’t realize it. Sam was a scholar above all else. He desired knowledge of any kind like a person in the desert desired water. So he now found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. Continuing any interaction would be seen as a betrayal by Dean. Stopping - which would be the right thing to do - meant losing out on gaining valuable knowledge. 

Sam tried to figure out how he was going to face Dean in the morning. Should he act like nothing happened? Should he try to talk to Dean about it? He didn’t know and it bothered him. A lot.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

A loud banging was what woke Sam the next morning. He shot up out of bed, searching the room with wide eyes. The duffel bag full of their supplies was on the table, guns and boxes of bullets spilling from within. A quick scan showed Dean was missing, which was confirmed with a look outside and the Impala was gone. After a second, Sam walked over to his duffel bag and pulled out some clean clothing. Clothes in hand, he entered the bathroom to shower and change. Ten minutes later and he was ready for the day.

“Hey Sam, got breakfast!” Dean called out over the sound of the motel door closing.

Taking a deep breath, Sam pulled himself together before leaving the bathroom to face his brother. The table was now cleared of their weapons in favor of food. One side had a bowl of fruit and a bottle of orange juice. The other side had a plastic container with pancakes, bacon, sausage, and some coffee.

Sam’s stomach felt like it was full of lead. Even though he was angry, Dean had gotten him his ‘rabbit food’ for breakfast. He didn’t know why his brother had done it, but he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. “Thanks.”

Dean grunted a reply. Sam spent a second watching his brother eat before he did the same. The next few minutes were spent in silence, both of them focused on eating. Halfway through the meal, a newspaper appeared on the table opened to the obituaries, where most of their hunts came from. Sam also booted up his laptop to check news websites.

“Well I’ve got nothing. What about you?” Dean asked, breaking the silence.

“There’s demonic activity in Blue Earth, Minnesota.”

“You sure?” Dean stood from his seat and walked over to Sam’s side of the table.

“Yeah it has all the signs. Lightning storms, cattle mutilations.” Sam replied.

“Blue Earth, Minnesota it is.”He moved to throw his trash away and Sam did the same.

It took them five minutes tops to clean up the room. After living on the road for so long, they learned to unpack the essentials. Sam offered to put their things in the Impala while Dean went to check out. Splitting the load meant they finished quickly and were on the road before too long.

They fell into their usual routine once they reached the highway. Dean played a tape, tapping his fingers to the rhythm of the beat. Sam laid his head on the window, trying to hold back a smile. He treasured moments like these. They were peaceful, and reminded him of how things used to be. At the same time he resented them, just a little. These moments were a poor imitation of their former relationship. They weren't comfortable silences, easy companionship or quick laughter. Instead, the quiet was fragile, with cracks of tension barely concealed. One word would shatter them into sharp barbs aimed to hurt.

The music stopped playing a couple of hours into the trip. It wouldn’t have been odd, except Dean started fidgeting. Wondering if his brother was hungry or needed a restroom, Sam went back to staring at the scenery. He realized Dean wanted to talk when they drove right past the next rest stop.  
He just barely kept from fidgeting himself when it happened. Praying to God wouldn’t help at all. Though he wondered if praying to Cas would. Then again, he might side with Dean.

“So, we gonna talk about last night?” Dean asked uncomfortably.

“What’s there to talk about Dean?”

“Did Lucifer say anything...odd?”

“It was an impromptu dream invasion from the devil, Dean. The whole thing was ‘odd’” Sam couldn’t help but snap. “What are you getting at?”

Dean was silent for about thirty seconds before he responded. “I had a late night visit from Michael.”

The Impala was so quiet after that that they could have heard a pin drop. Sam stared at his brother, who focused on the road. That Dean had his own nocturnal visitor was the last direction he had expected this talk to take. 

“What? Got nothing to say?” Dean fell back into his default setting of anger and sarcasm.

“Well what do you expect me to say?” Sam bit out.

“You can start by telling me what that bastard wanted..”

“Man, I told you already. He wanted to know who killed me yesterday.”

“And you just expect me to believe that!” Dean’s voice was full of frustration.

Sam felt as if he'd been punched as that jab left his brothers mouth. He had to take a minute to catch his breath before he could respond. “What’s the point of talking, if you won’t believe me?”

“I just want the truth Sam.”

“And I am telling you the truth!”

“They why did it take Cas so long to wake you up?” Dean glared as he asked this question. The blaring of a car horn pulled Dean’s eyes back to the road. He had just enough time to pull back into their lane and avoid a collision. No one said a thing as Dean pulled onto the side of the road.

“He...he was telling me stuff.” Sam whispered as Dean shut the car off, hoping he wouldn’t hear.

“What kind of stuff?” Dean asked as he turned to face Sam.

“He told me that we had some weird connection. And that he used it to find me just as I was dying.” Sam mumbled the last part to his knees, pointedly not looking at his brother.

“What? Wait, hold on. How’d the hell he find you in the first place?” Dean turned to face Sam as he asked this.

“Uhh...Now that you mention it, I don’t think he did.” Sam couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought to ask Lucifer himself. 

What if he had found some way around Cas’ protection? Would he be able to find him during the daylight hours as well?

“Let’s just hope it’s nothing. We don’t need personal visits from Lucifer since we get enough of them from douchebags like Zachariah.” Dean accompanied this statement with an eye roll.

“What about Michael?”

“What about him?” Dean asked, brow furrowed.

“What’d he say to you?”

Dean went silent. Sam wondered if this conversation would continue, or if he wanted it to. In all the time he’d been with Dean, he never once lost his concentration while driving. A slip meant damaging Baby. Usually, they didn’t have such heated conversations in the Impala without pulling over first. And that was only if the Winchester tried-and-true method of suppression and avoidance failed. 

“He told me that my soul was 'born of his grace'" he made a face at that. "Can’t help but hope it’s some bullshit manipulation tactic to get me to say yes.” Dean said after a while, staring at Sam like he expected him to agree with him.

Sam, though, got caught up in an internal battle. When Lucifer had told him that, it made him feel special. Like he had something that no one else did. To hear that Michael had said the same to Dean, it made him jealous. It was completely irrational, but he couldn’t help how he felt. To be honest, Sam hadn’t allowed himself to believe what Lucifer had told him. Having this information backed by another source - no matter how questionable - made it easier.

“Okay, say it’s true, then how’d he get into your head in the first place?” Sam asked as he turned to face his brother.

“You tell me. Lucifer had to have told you something, even if half of its bullshit.”

“He didn’t say anything.”

Something must have shown on his face because Dean was giving him one of his looks. It was one that only started showing up recently. Sam, in his head, called it Dean’s ‘I don’t believe one word you’re saying’ face. The look was usually intimidating, but he had no intention of saying anything. When he didn’t respond, Dean just started up the car.  
The rest of the trip was tense. Neither brother wanted to talk, both caught up in their own minds. Sam wished he had something to distract himself with. He would have played some music, but he didn’t want to fight with Dean about it. So he could either sleep or stare out of the window. Since sleeping might mean a visit from Lucifer, Sam decided to go with the window. It was the safer option out of the two.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

A couple of hours later, Sam saw a sign welcoming them to Blue Earth, Minnesota. The first motel they came across was a Super 8, which looked a lot nicer than some of the other places they had stayed.   
Dean headed over to the office to grab a room as Sam pulled their duffel bags from the car.  
It was a short walk to their room. Dean held the door open so Sam could walk through with their bags. Once they were settled inside, he grabbed the salt. It was his turn to set the salt lines and it gave him the chance to do an inspection. As he put the salt down, he mapped out where all the exit and entry points were located.

“I’m gonna hit up a bar. You wanna come?.” Dean was halfway out the door, and only seemed to ask as an afterthought.

“Sure.” Sam hurried to pack the salt away.

As they walked out the door, it almost seemed like old times. Back before Dean couldn’t completely trust him and they had to constantly watch their every move. Going to a bar seemed like a good opportunity for them to relax. He knew Dean’s end goal was to make some money off some poor fools but he didn’t mind. This would give him the chance to try and figure out what was happening from the locals before they talked to the police.

The walk to the bar wasn’t long. It took them about fifteen minutes, and Sam was just hoping they could get in before the bar got too crowded. He was caught off guard when they got to the bar and saw it was practically empty. There were ten people there, not including the bartender or themselves. Sam noticed they got some weird looks as they entered, and he wondered what that was all about.  
He watched Dean head over to the pool tables, but Sam decided to go get a seat at the bar. He wasn’t really in the mood to drink, but still ordered a beer when the bartender asked. He already got some strange looks and didn’t want to seem even more suspicious. He heard the crack of balls hitting each other and knew a pool game had started in the back. He figured his brother had started it and wondered how much he would end up making.

“Hey, what’s your relationship with the guy at the pool table? The one you walked in with?” This question came from the bartender, a man in his forties with brown hair and a receding hairline.

“He’s my work associate.” Sam just barely kept from rolling his eyes. He really hoped the man didn’t assume they were dating.

“ ‘Course, so what brings you guys to Blue Earth, Minnesota?”

“Work.” Sam turned to the bartender as he said this.

“Who you guys workin’ for?” The bartender squinted his eyes, eyebrow raised.

“We’re FBI.” Sam was glad the badge from their last case was in his pocket.

“Guess you guys are here to help with the disappearances, Agent Paterson.” The bartender’s facial features relaxed as he handed the badge back.

“We are. You have anything you want to share?”

“Not much to say, really. People started getting snatched from their homes in the middle of the night. The police say they have no leads, and folks are starting to get worried.”

“Do you know if the people taken were involved in anything suspicious?” Sam leaned forward and rested his arms on the counter.

“Nah, they were decent, hard working people.” The bartender said in a raised voice as he refilled a customer’s drink.

“Well if you can think of anything else just let me know Mr…” Sam trailed off as he handed the bartender a business card with his cell number on it.

“Joe Wilson. And this must be your partner.” Joe took the business card and placed it in his pocket.

“Mr. Wilson this is Robert Parson, my partner. Robert, this is Joe Wilson. He’s been telling me what he knows about the disappearances.” Sam cut in before Dean could say anything.

“Good to meet you Mr. Wilson.” Dean stuck his hand out to the bartender.

“Pleasure. You want a drink?”

“Sure, I’ll take a beer,” Dean said, sitting on the stool next to Sam. “Think you could answer a question for me.”

“Sure, what do you want to know?”

“Why’s this place so empty?”

“Only people come round here are the ones passing through town. People don’t want to visit when folks are being snatched from their homes.” Joe shifted and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.

“Guess that makes sense. Thanks for the beer.” Dean grinned, turning his attention to the game playing on the lone television. 

When Sam turned back, the bartender was helping out some of the other customers. He was eventually pulled into a conversation with someone else. The conversation ranged from topics about the current political situation in America (which Sam was ashamed to admit he lost track of) to who was going to win the World Series. That was completely out of Sam's zone so he just agreed to whatever the man said.

“Can I get you boys anything else?” Mr. Wilson asked about an hour later.

“Nah, I think we’re good.” Dean handed him some bills as he stood from his seat.

“You have a nice night Mr. Wilson.” Sam said, standing from his seat as well. He waved good bye to the man he had been talking with as they headed to the door.

“So what'd you find out?” Dean asked as soon as they were outside.

“He didn’t really know much. Just said that people were going missing from their homes. He didn’t know   
if they were involved with anything they shouldn’t be.” Sam said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Okay. Well I didn’t make much tonight. These people seemed too worn down or I would've played a couple more games.”

The walk back to the motel was silent. When they got back, Sam moved over to his duffel bag. Stripping down to his boxers, he pulled a t-shirt on and got into bed. As he got settled, he watched as Dean moved around the room. Once the light went out, he laid on his side and counted his breaths until he fell asleep.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

The police station in Blue Earth, Minnesota wasn’t very big. Everything was crammed together into one space. There was barely any room to walk between the desks and filing cabinets. The little space that was left was covered with boxes and papers. Some people were crowded around a bulletin board. Others were sitting at desks answering phones. The officer located at the front desk was focused on the computer in front of him as they approached.

“May we speak with the sheriff?” Sam asked.

The officer just continued typing. Once he finished, he looked up at Sam. “Sheriff’s busy right now. Come back another time.”

“FBI.” Dean flashed his badge in the officer’s face.

“Right, let me tell him you gentlemen are here.” The officer picked up his phone and dialed a number.

He directed them to the only office in the station, located at the very back, when he got off the phone. It had a glass door with Gregory Wilkes in peeling gold lettering. The man sitting at the desk stood up as Sam and Dean approached the door.

“Hi, may I help you? I’m the Sheriff, Gregory Wilkes.” He offered his hand to each of them as they entered his office.

“Agent’s Pearson and Paterson.” Sam pointed to each of himself and Dean in turn.

“Our boss sent us to help with those disappearances. What can you tell us?” Dean said all of this as he settled into one of the chairs.

“Twelve people have gone missing from their homes over the last two weeks. Nothing to connect them and none of them were involved with anything illegal. ‘Course that isn’t the weirdest part.” The sheriff tapped a pen against his desk.

“Weirdest part?” Sam asked from his seat in front of the desk.

“There were no broken locks and the windows were not only locked but all in one piece. They didn’t even steal anything.” Sheriff Wilkes pulled a folder out of one of his desk drawers as he said this.

Sam shared a look with Dean before asking if there was anything that stuck out about the crime scenes. Anything ranging from an item that looked out of place to strange smells such as sulfur.

“Not sure. I can give you the address for the latest crime scene if you gentlemen want to check it out.” Sheriff Wilkes scribbled something on a stray piece of paper before handing it to Sam.

“Thank you Sheriff,” Sam said as he accepted the piece of paper.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

The house of the most recent kidnapping was located on the edge of the city. It was a two story house with a white picket fence. There was a Porsche in the driveway and Dean parked the Impala across the street.

Sam tried the door knob. When it turned all the way and the door opened, he pulled his gun out. With a nod to Dean, they both walked inside. Sam went left and Dean went upstairs. As he walked down the hallway, he heard muffled voices coming from a room nearby.

He turned just in time to see Dean heading towards his location from some other part of the house. Sam had just registered brother’s presence when a copper-like smell drifted out of the room. When the smell hit his nose, he swore could taste it - the metal, the sulfur, the heady rush. He was salivating, lost to sense memory for a time that couldn't be longer than a heartbeat, but felt like an eternity. 

Sam clenched his jaw when he came back to himself. He hadn't felt pangs of his addiction this bad since they went to go confront Famine. The moment they had entered the town, that coppery scent followed him everywhere. It was faint though, like the source of the smell was somewhere in the town, but he just couldn’t find it. He had tried to fight it, he really did. Resistance was futile in the end. Sam had been craving to taste demon’s blood too much to care for the consequences.

Sam noticed the hard look Dean was giving him, and he tried to pull himself together. It was always harder to control himself when he found himself around demons. After drinking it for so long, he could smell it even if the vessel wasn’t cut and bleeding. It ended up being a double-edged sword. It made it easier to tell when a demon was around, but then he had to deal with the sharp hunger he felt.

“You alright?" Dean whispered from nearby.

“I’m fine Dean.” Sam went to step forward but was stopped by a hand on his chest.

"You don't look fine. Maybe you should wait outside." Dean said as he turned to face the other direction.

Sam tightened his hold on his gun while closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. This wasn’t the time to be arguing with his brother. Just because he was fighting the hunger didn’t mean he would just leave Dean alone. The moment he opened his eyes, two demons walked out of the kitchen.

“Looks like we have visitors,” one of the demon’s said.

Dean spun around just as the demon that spoke launched himself forward. Sam raised his gun to shoot the second demon. A kick from behind threw him forward and he almost dropped his gun. Pain radiated from the middle of his back.

Sam jumped back up; adrenaline rushing through his body. He saw a flash of silver from the corner of his eye. One of the demons went flying past; Sam just barely blocked a punch from the demon that kicked him.

He tried to find something heavy to hit the demon with. If he could knock him out, then they would be able to question it for information. A crash nearby took his attention off of the demon in front of him for a second.

That was all the demon needed, because he punched Sam in the face. A brief fight ensued. Sam hit him with a lamp and the demon slammed him into a wall. The wind was knocked out of him. As he struggled to get up, the demon suddenly collapsed.

A few minutes later the demon was tied to a chair in the living room. Underneath the chair was a devil’s trap. Sam was pushed off to a corner as Dean got ready to interrogate the demon. He would have rather been outside; then he wouldn’t be able to smell the blood.

When the demon finally woke up, Sam focused completely on their hostage. It allowed him to concentrate on something other than walking over to the bodies on the ground and drinking his fill.

“How about you tell us where your buddies are?” Dean asked as he circled the demon.

“Why would I want to do that?” the demon raised an eyebrow as followed Dean with his eyes.  
Dean just raised an eyebrow before he cut the demon's arm with Ruby's knife.  
The demon let out a scream, short, but loud enough that it echoed off the walls. Blood welled up and rolled down his arm. Sam crossed his arms over his chest as he was assaulted once again with the strong scent.

“Now lets try this again.”

Instead of responding, the demon spit in Dean’s face. Dean slowly wiped the spit away. And stabbed the demon in the leg. He didn’t scream this time, but Sam flinched and tried to breathe as little as possible.

“Dean…”

“I got this Sam.”

Dean went back to circling the demon, sizing him up the entire time. At one point he ran the tip of the knife along the demon's neck, slowly drawing blood.

“Where are your buddies?”

The demon just glared. Dean stabbed the demon in the shoulder, drawing another loud, echoing scream. Sam prayed the police wouldn't show up as he tried to breath as little as possible.

“They’re in an abandoned warehouse on the other side of town.”

Sam asked what the exact location was from his spot in the living room. Once the demon gave them the information, Dean stabbed him in the heart.

“C’mon Sam, let’s go.” Dean cleaned Ruby’s knife and walked out the front door, leaving the dead bodies behind.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

The warehouse they were directed to was definitely run down, but not abandoned. There were about five different cars sitting in front. When Sam and Dean entered, they saw nine people standing around a table.  
Their voices echoed off the walls, and they seemed to be arguing about something. As they walked closer to the group, Sam realized they were chanting something. It was in Latin, and based off of what he heard, they were attempting to summon Lucifer.

It didn’t take them long to take out the demons. Neither of them were seriously injured, though Dean had a cut on his arm and Sam was pretty sure his ribs were bruised. As they left the warehouse, Sam felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. When he turned around, he saw Lucifer standing in the entrance of the warehouse. He felt his mouth go dry when he realized the demon's ritual summoning worked.

"Hey Sam, you coming or what?" Dean yelled from the Impala.

Sam pulled his eyes away from Lucifer when his brother called. When he looked back, the archangel was gone. He shook his head and jogged to the car. He wanted to get as far away from here as possible.


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

Sam had been driving all night trying to catch up to Dean. He ended up approaching this situation with the same focus he used on a hunt. That way he didn't have to focus on what caused him to be driving like a mad man. Dean had run away to say yes to Michael. Sam was furious. After all the effort Dean put into keeping him from saying yes, he couldn't believe he went and did this. The driving allowed him to calm down, because there was no way he could see Dean when he was this angry and was running on little to no sleep. Sleep deprivation and anger tended to make Sam do something he would regret, like sleeping with Ruby.

Sam finally pulled into a parking lot when he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. After renting a room for the night, he pulled his laptop out. He spent a few minutes making sure he was still going in the right direction. It wouldn’t help at all if Dean had moved in the last couple of hours.  
With that task completed, Sam turned his laptop off. After laying on the bed, he kicked his boots off. He was too tired to even change his clothe, though he regretted not turning the light off as he drifted off to sleep. What felt like only a few minutes later, Sam woke up to the feeling of someone staring at him. He groaned when he turned his head and saw Lucifer sitting on the empty bed in his motel room.

"Go away. I don't have the energy to deal with you right now."

"Now Sam, there’s no need to be rude. Your brother is the one planning on betraying you, not me,” Lucifer said.

"GO. AWAY!" Sam considered throwing a glass at Lucifer but decided against it.

When Lucifer still hadn’t left, Sam took a deep breath before asking, "What do you want?"

“Do I need a reason to talk to you Sam?”

“Of course you do. All you angels seem to care about these days is convincing me and Dean to say yes.”

"Sam, I would never manipulate you into saying yes. I care about your feelings." Lucifer approached Sam as he said this.

He felt himself getting angry as he heard Lucifer talking about caring. As if he could really understand human emotion.

"You, care about me? That's rich coming from an angel that wants to kill all of humanity. How can you claim to care about me when you hate humans?" Sam got off the bed and started pacing before he did something stupid, like punch him in the face.

Just as Lucifer went to respond, Sam cut him off. "I do not want to hear any bullshit excuses about how I am an exception. No matter how you look at it, I am human and you have made your disgust for humanity perfectly clear. Do not tell me you care for me when you don’t mean it.”

"Sam, I care for you because you are unique when compared to the rest of your species. God took part of my grace to create your soul. My only regret was not being able to watch you grow,” Lucifer said, all in an effort to gain Sam's sympathy.

"So you're saying that's a real thing? You brought it up once before, and Dean heard about it from Michael, but I didn't really believe it." Sam was always eager to hear more about his status as a vessel. What he wasn't interested in was Lucifer's stories.

Sam stopped his pacing as he waited for Lucifer to respond. This brought him face to face with Lucifer - and he was horrified at the sight. He couldn’t believe he had missed it before. As preoccupied as he was, it was hard not to notice the skin on someone's face was burned off.

Even though he had killed plenty of monsters before, seeing the facial tissue of Lucifer's vessel made him nauseous. Seeing the condition the body was in, Sam wondered if that would happen to him should he say yes. It wasn't a pleasant thought at all. Judging by the lack of blood, Sam figured the wounds were immediately cauterized after they appeared on his face. Morbidly, he wondered what the wounds would feel like. Sam's arm was halfway into the air before he realized what exactly had just crossed his mind.  
Sam immediately pulled his hand back and fought the urge to cross his arms over his chest. That would be worse than almost touching the face of the Devil. When Lucifer noticed the aborted hand motion he reached out to Sam and grabbed his hand.

Sam immediately pulled away and stepped as far from him as possible. Lucifer almost seemed disappointed but Sam didn’t care. He didn’t feel like holding hands with Satan. It would make things extremely awkward.

“Sam there is something you must know about me. I was thrown out of heaven because my father wanted me to love humans more than him. I didn't believe humans were deserving of my father's love. They're flawed and only care about themselves. Your species is destroying the planet; destroying my father's creation.” Lucifer had the voice one adopted when they were telling a story.

“I don’t get what that has to do with me.”

“I'm trying to make a point Sam. You're not like the rest of your species. You don't mindlessly destroy the world around you. It amazes me that you manage to care about strangers. You put your life on the line for them. It's...strange." Lucifer's eye brows were drawn; his lips pursed.

"That doesn't make any sense though. Other people have done the same thing before and I don’t hear you praising them.”

"That’s because they are not you Sam," replied Lucifer.

He moved backwards when he realized how close Lucifer was. He stopped when his legs hit the edge of the bed. He couldn’t believe he had foolishly let himself get trapped. The lights flickered just as Lucifer moved to grab his hand. This time, he didn’t disappear immediately. The archangel stayed exactly where he was and Sam felt the temperature drop by ten degrees.

It didn’t stop there. The room got progressively colder as time went on. It got to the point where Sam could hear his teeth chattering. He tried to think of a warm, tropical place but that didn't help warm him up. All he could focus on was the freezing temperature. An odd look passed over Lucifer’s face as he looked at Sam. Before he could decipher it, the lights flickered out. Lucifer was gone when the lights returned. The temperature started rising, immediately warming him up. Before he had time to process what happened a bright light flashed through the room. At that exact moment he felt a jolt of energy pass through his body. The energy wasn’t harmful, and Sam opened his eyes a minute later.

"I have been trying to wake you for the past thirty minutes," Castiel said just as Sam opened his eyes.

"Were you speaking with Lucifer? Is that why I could not wake you?” Cas asked before Sam could get a word in edgewise.

"Yes, I was speaking with him. So I guess that’s why you had so much trouble. But why are you here?”

Castiel took a second to study Sam before saying, "I am here to go with you to retrieve Dean."

"Right, retrieve Dean, I forgot about that," Sam muttered as he got up and headed over to his duffel bag.

Sam quickly grabbed some clean clothes before heading to the bathroom. Once he was inside, he got ready for the day. As Sam packed his stuff up, he noticed that Castiel was gone. Shrugging, he left the motel room to check out. Once that was done, he hopped into the stolen vehicle he had.

Driving down the highway gave Sam the chance to think about Lucifer. Talking civilly with the devil was a strange thing. Wanting to touch his wounded face was just as strange. He blamed it on his obsession with knowledge. Normal wounds did not do what Lucifer’s did. However, fear had quickly overridden his fascination. It was fear of the unknown. He had next to no information on how vessels were affected by their hosts. It didn't seem pleasant, judging by the state of those wounds.

The entire thing was odd, and Sam hoped the nightly visits stopped soon. They were more than he could handle. One visit from Lucifer was one visit to many. A loud whooshing sound filled the car. Sam jerked the car, afraid his passenger was Lucifer, and just narrowly avoided driving into the other lane of traffic. When he looked over, Cas was in the passenger seat.

"Damn it Cas, you can’t just do stuff like that! Where were you anyway?" Sam was gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles were turning white.

"I left to go to Dean’s location. When I realized how long it would take for you to arrive, I decided to join you." Cas said.

“Right. Do you mind if I ask you something?” Sam asked.

“What would you like to know?”

“How do angels enter a person's dreams?” After getting so many non answers from Lucifer, Sam was hoping Cas would give him a straight answer.

“The angel needs to know who the person is and have a general idea of what they look like. With that knowledge, they can slip in anytime they want.”

“Would it be different for Dean and I? Since we have that sigil you gave us?”

“Yes, it would. You would have to give the angel permission to enter.” Cas replied with something in his voice he couldn’t identify.

“Does it have to be verbal permission?” Sam asked a little too quickly.

“No it does not. Angels can both see and feel a human’s soul. So if the human does not want us there, we won’t be allowed to enter. This can also be affected by the emotional   
state of the person as well.”

“What do you mean?” Sam wished he had thought to ask Cas about stuff like this before.

“Well if the person is highly emotional, their soul can call out asking for help. Normally the nearest angel will answer the call, though you can call someone specific.”

“Right.”

“Is there anything else you want to know Sam?”

“No, I’m good. But thanks for answering my questions Cas.”

“You're welcome Sam.”

The car was quiet for a few minutes before the conversation turned to Dean. Time flew by as they discussed their plan and what had to happen. In no time at all, they arrived at the motel where Dean was staying.

Once the car was parked, Sam took a deep breath to collect himself. With one last look at Cas, he exited the car. He prayed he wasn’t too late as he approached the door with the Impala parked in front of it. He thought it was ironic that he was praying, considering most angels didn’t exactly like him. In a fit of rebellion, Sam prayed to Lucifer. He thought it was almost fitting. Praying to an archangel he hated to rescue the brother he loved. With that thought, Sam picked the lock and entered the motel room.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

Once Cas flew away Dean, Sam walked over to the box and letters sitting on the table in the motel room. The box had Bobby’s address on it. Deciding to ignore the letters for the moment, Sam used a pocket knife to open the box. Inside he saw their Dad’s journal, the keys to the Impala, and Dean’s favorite gun.

Sam knew without a doubt that these were his brother’s most prized possessions. So it made sense that he would want to send them to Bobby. However, he wished Dean hadn’t felt like he needed to do this in the first place.

With one last glance at the box, Sam moved onto the letters. One was addressed to Bobby, and the other to himself. For half a second, Sam was tempted to read Bobby’s letter. He didn’t and instead grabbed his own letter.

_Dear Sammy,_

After that, there were a lot of crossed out lines. Then the letter started.

_Look, a letter ain't the best way to do this, but it’s the only way. I won’t apologize for saying yes. Not when it means I can keep you safe._

_I’m doing this so you won’t have the chance to say yes. I’ve seen what happens if you do. And trust me, it ain’t pretty. So you can hate me if you want Sam. At least you’ll be able to._

_Take care of yourself._

_~Dean_

Sam did nothing after he read the letter. He felt numb. He was also having trouble comprehending what he just read. Logically he knew what his brother was trying to say. It was a goodbye letter. What didn't make sense was that second paragraph. What did he mean, I've seen what happens if he said yes?

In the end, that didn't matter. What mattered was that he saved his brother. Now all they needed was to come up with a plan to get rid of Lucifer. Once he was gone, the angels wouldn't have any reason to bother them.


	4. Interlude One

**Interlude One**

**_Three Months Ago_ **

Sam was sitting on a circular stone floor, his back against a steel wall. He tried to remember when Bobby's panic room had been an exciting, impressive thing. Something he wanted to study and soak in. As it was now, most of his time in there was linked to the pain of detoxing. Time moved differently when he was there, at times it slowed down and others it flew by. Right now, it was dragging, punctuated by the grinding of his teeth, the shivers that wracked his body and the shadows swirling in the corner of his eyes. He knew that that meant he had almost reached the stage of withdrawal were he would be plagued by hallucinations. 

In his weakness he almost missed Ruby; what he wouldn’t give to have her cradle his head and rock him through this, while giving him what he needed to make the pain stop. The errant thought made his lack of relief feel deserved. Instead, he tried to come up with something to distract himself, which wasn't very effective. He knew that all too soon, he would be confronted by every fear he'd ever had.

Mostly he was afraid of himself - of the darkness inside of him that lead him here. He tried to escape this by being something else; a good son for his father, normal for Jess, and a good brother for Dean. Of course, all of that worked out perfectly. 

This kept him from being true to himself, and for a while he was okay with that. The only times he really had trouble keeping the facade up was when he was hunting with Dean. His brother was so convinced that everything fit into two categories, Good and Evil, that he never saw the shades of grey. This was one of the biggest reasons that Sam tried so hard to suppress anything inside of himself that wasn’t good - he didn’t want to be a monster in Dean’s eyes. It didn't really matter if it a werewolf that wanted to be a normal person, or a vampire that was trying not to drink human blood. In the end, monsters were monsters, and they needed to die. 

He had perfected his persona after a while, but that all went downhill when he fell in with Ruby. Partly because of the addictive qualities of the demon's blood, but also because he, if only for a while, fully embraced the darkness that was a part of him. Then Dean found out and everything went to hell. The horrified look on Dean's face when he caught him would be seared into his memory forever.

The first time he was rushed off to Bobby's panic room was a mostly a blur. It all seemed to rush by, with only certain events standing out. He didn't have much of a reprieve after that because Dean's status as Michael's vessel was revealed. Now here he was, the one who set Lucifer free and his brother was both the 'Righteous Man' and Michael's vessel.

"I'm still not sure what that they meant with that title." Sam mused aloud, wrapping his arms around his torso in a futile attempt to stop the tremors running through his body.

Sam knew the definition of righteous, and it was everything Dean wasn't. His brother wasn't a law abiding citizen, nor was he one of the most moral people around. He'd committed more sinful acts than the average citizen did in their lifetime. That wasn't even counting all the laws that he broke. On top of that, they both committed murder on a daily basis. That was on the penultimate list of 'Things that you should not do'.

'Course he wasn't sure if he could believe in that anymore, since angels weren't what he thought they were. Then again, it wasn't like they were killing people, so he could almost believe the Angels didn't have a problem with that. With how things are going, the higher up angels might not even care if Dean was killing people. Sam wasn't sure about the regular angels like Cas, since he didn't know how many angels knew about the plan for the Apocalypse.

"There has to be something I'm missing. I can't understand how they got from Point A to Point B." Sam said this out loud, if only to break the silence.

Then it hit him. What if the title was completely arbitrary? While they'd been trying to keep more seals from being broken, Dean relayed a conversation he had with Alistair. He said that they only needed Dean when they couldn't get John Winchester to break and spill blood in Hell. Then there was the fact that Cas called him an abomination as well. What if it those titles were given to them because of their status as vessels for archangels?

"If that's true..." Sam bite his tongue to hold back a scream as a painful burning sensation ran through his body.

If that were true, then everything Lucifer had said to him so far took on a completely different meaning. Lucifer He was the only one who said he fully accepted him, darker urges and all. Sam wanted to laugh, though none of this was remotely funny. 

Sam didn't ( _couldn’t_ ) honestly believe Lucifer was as accepting as he claimed to be. If his theory were right, though, that meant that he had a lot more in common with Lucifer then he could accept. The thought of someone accepting him completely, flaws and all, was the one thing he'd always wanted but also the one thing he didn't believe existed.

What Lucifer was offering was something he couldn't accept. Accepting was the same thing as saying yes to Lucifer so he could wear him to the Apocalypse. It also meant losing his family, something Sam couldn't allow to happen. 

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

It might have been minutes or hours later when the hallucinations started. Well Sam was pretty sure it was a hallucination, because that was the only reason why Lucifer would be in Bobby's panic room. He just stared at Lucifer, who was standing in the middle of the room. After some time had passed, the Archangel turned to face him. A few minutes passed before Sam finally broke the silence.

"Can you get this over with?"

"Get what over with?" Lucifer asked, brow furrowed and head tilted to the side.

"Wow, this is a new one." Sam wondered if his mind was now playing tricks on him - which was all kinds of weird since his mind would have had to come up with the hallucination.

"Then again," Sam said, cutting Lucifer off just as he opened his mouth, "Most of my other hallucinations were my family. So I'm not quite sure why you're here."

"You've been hallucinating?" Lucifer almost sounded concerned and wasn't that an odd thought to have. The Devil, being concerned. He wondered if Hell had finally frozen over.

Sam didn't answer, sure that if he kept silent Lucifer would say what he came to say and then leave. That's what they all did. Called him a monster, in a number of different ways, and then left. Those words and the blinding pain were all he could remember from his first detox session. 'Course it took him some time to realize no one had actually been there with him - his first clue was the fact that he remembered talking with his mother.

"Why have you been hallucinating?" Lucifer asked, and Sam jumped when he saw him crouched down in front of him. He didn't remember seeing him move.

"Why do you care? It's not like your real anyways." Sam ignored the question, figuring since his mind had created Lucifer for some reason that he didn't understand.

"I care about you Sam. So if something's wrong, then I'd like to know." Again, Lucifer almost sounded concerned.

"No you don't. You're the Devil. So you can't." Sam wasn't sure what to make of the strange look that briefly appeared on Lucifer's face. He was starting to get a headache.

"You're wrong Sam. I do care. I'm not the Devil you think you know." Sam didn't have enough energy left to move away as Lucifer put his hand on his shoulder and then touched his face with his other hand.

Lucifer's eyes widened briefly before narrowing. "You're burning up. What's wrong?"

"Withdrawal. Demon's blood." Sam murmured. He was too tired to care about the weird behavior of an hallucination.

Lucifer didn't say anything and instead helped him stand. Sam weakly struggled to get away, but didn't put much effort into it. His body hurt all over, he could barely stand, and at this point he just wanted to sleep. With Lucifer's help, Sam made his way to the cot and laid down.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

The sound of steel moving across stone was harsh in the silence of the panic room, causing Sam to jump from the cot. His heart was pounding in his chest and his breathing quickened as he turned to the door. When he saw Bobby standing there, he took deep breaths to try and calm down. He also saw Dean and Castiel standing near the basement steps.

"Hey Sam, how ya feelin?" Bobby asked, bringing his attention back to him.

"I feel great." Sam was shocked when he realized he did feel a lot better. He felt sore after the last time this happened. _It could be because I didn't have as much blood in my system this time._

"Well come on, I've got food for you up stairs." Bobby said just as Sam's stomach growled.

He hated the panic room so he was happy to be leaving. As he followed Bobby upstairs, he thought back on his strange encounter with Lucifer. The hallucinations he'd had during his first trip into the panic room made more sense than this one. Even though their words hurt, they acted just like he thought they would. Lucifer didn't. He didn't act the way Sam thought he would.

Instead of calling him a monster. A freak. He had asked what was wrong and seemed concerned for him. Which again didn't make sense. All of his past hallucinations had known what had happened, because his mind had created them. Sam vaguely remembered thinking about Dean, Michael, and the whole 'Righteous Man' thing so maybe that had something to do with it.

"Are you okay Sam?" Cas's deep voice broke Sam out of his thoughts.

"Yeah Cas, I am. Just thinking about some things." Sam shot him a small smile, hoping to reassure him.

"Okay. If you need to talk, then I am here." Cas said, walking off to go talk to Dean.

Sam was glad Cas hadn't asked any other questions. Cas always ended up asking those awkward questions that got right to the heart of a problem. He hadn't even told Dean or Bobby about his hallucinations yet, so it's not like he would have told Cas. There was also the fact that he didn't want them knowing anything. He wanted to avoid talking about what his hallucinations have said.

"Hey Sam, how ya feelin?" Dean greeted, standing to meet him as he entered the kitchen.

"I'm great Dean. Just hungry." Sam said.

That seemed to be the magic words because Dean went into what Sam called 'Mother Hen' mode. His brother immediately ushered him into a chair and starting putting food in front of him. He grinned, it was nice to see Dean like this. Dean only did things like this when he was sick these days. Dean and Bobby started arguing over what he should eat. Dean wanted to feed him his 'rabbit food', but Bobby thought he should eat something lighter.

As they continued to argue about food, Sam tried to focus on their words and not think about what happened in the panic room. Dwelling on his strange hallucination would just make him confused and give himself a headache. That hallucination wasn't important. What was important was the people in front of him, not the hallucination telling him things he wished were true.

The next time he saw Lucifer, everything would be back to normal. He would be the Devil who didn't like humans and certainly didn't care about Sam. Sam would go back to ignoring Lucifer's words and continuing to say no. He also tried very hard to forget the last thing Lucifer said to him before he fell asleep.

_"I'm not the Devil you think you know."_


	5. Interlude Two

**Interlude 2**

While Sam had mostly forgotten his conversation with the hallucination Lucifer - i.e. acted like it didn't happen- he hadn't forgotten the last thing he said. _I’m not the Devil you think you know._ To be honest, Sam had never really thought hard on “the Devil”. He had of course heard of him - it’s a hard topic to avoid. But in his experience, he was just a boogey man that people blamed for the evil in the world. Now that he was in fact, a real person, he wondered how much of the lore was true.

It was through Pastor Jim that Sam was introduced to anything religious. As a child, he was only interested in Angels. Solely because of the good they represented. He didn’t care for the Devil, because he couldn’t do anything for him. Angels could, as long as he prayed.  
So Sam prayed to Angels, asking them to watch over his family as they hunted. It wasn’t until he got into college that he really learned anything about the Devil. He ended up taking a Christian Theology class solely because Jess was taking one.

_~~00~~00~~00~~00~~_

_“Now class, today we shall be discussing the Fall of Lucifer.” Professor Johnson said as he straightened out the papers on his desk._

_Two months into the semester and Sam couldn’t believe how many scholars had written about this topic, and his professor seemed determined to cover them all. Lucifer wanted to become God and raised an army of angels. He fell because of his pride. God mad people at some point during all of this and Lucifer corrupted them. So people became flawed and imperfect because of Lucifer._

_Every class was centered around this lecture. Always told in the same low monotone voice. The professor was obsessed with it. It was a good day when they actually learned about Angels and Christ._

_As their professor lectured, Sam tried to figure out what perfume Jess was wearing. It was unlike the floral, cloyingly sweet smells that wafted off of Dean’s girls of choice. The scent reminded him of oranges and summer._

_Sitting this close, it was hard not to stare. Especially since the lecture was not holding his attention. He just got the courage to sit next to her and he didn’t want to lose that privilege. Whenever he looked at her, he imaged that was how Angels looked. He always found himself captivated by her beautiful blonde hair and the smile she always had._

_“Okay class, we have fifteen minutes left. I want you all to use the remaining time to find a partner and discuss topics for the final project.” He passed out papers before people started moving around the room._

_“Hey Sam, do you want to be partners?” Jess asked._

_“Yeah definitely.” Sam grinned and tried to ignore the nervous feeling in his stomach. The sole reason he was taking this class was because of Jessica Moore. He met Jess in his English class last semester. They only talked during class, but it was enough for him to develop a crush. When he found out she was taking this Christian Theology class, he decided to take it. This might give him a chance to see her more, and if he was lucky, get a date._

_“How are you enjoying the class so far?”_

_“I could do without all the discussions on the Devil.” Sam grinned when he heard Jess laugh._

_“Oh come on, I thought they were fascinating.”_

_“Yeah, the first two times.”_

_“Okay, okay. I admit defeat. So what do you want to do for the final project?” Jess asked as she opened up to a clean page in her notebook._

_“Well I was thinking we could talk about a saint.”_

_Sam watched Jess as she wrote down what he said in her notebook. He loved Jess’s hand writing, mostly because it was a lot neater than his. He also took the time to memorize Jess’s face while she was busy writing. She had this intense look of concentration, which Sam thought was adorable_

_When Jess looked back up, Sam immediately averted his eyes so he wouldn’t be caught staring. Then they started discussing things for the project and he didn’t have time to take in the features of Jess’s face._

_While they were busy working on their project outside of class, Professor Johnson continued with the lectures on the Devil. They had, at least, managed to move past the Fall. The lectures now turned to the Garden of Eden, and The Original Sin. The Devil convincing Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. How he made Demons -- without really going into any specific detail. He also described how every evil act that occurred in the world could be traced back to the Devil and his Demons._

_~~00~~00~~00~~00~~_

When asked what he learned in the class, Sam would quote something from his textbook. In reality, his professor only taught him that Lucifer was the source of all evil. That was hard for him to believe. He had been a hunter long enough to know that evil came in many forms.

He couldn’t believe that Lucifer was good if he wanted to become God and then tricked humans into sinning. That didn’t seem like the actions of a good person. Sam wasn’t one to see the world in black and white, good or evil. It was hard not to, when dealing with Satan and Angels.

Well he believed that in college. Sam knew now that Angels weren’t as virtuous as he first believed they were. Even though his belief in Angels had been proven wrong, he doubted he would change his opinion on Lucifer. He had already committed the worst sin possible in Sam’s eyes.

Jessica was the love of his life. The one person that Sam knew without a shadow of a doubt that he could have married and had kids with. To this day, Sam still carried around the ring he was going to give her.

So for Lucifer to wear her face like that... well, it pissed Sam off. A lot. Jess was one of the few good things in his life. Lucifer tainted her memory and that was something he just couldn’t forgive. It was that moment that the Devil lived up to his reputation and that’s one first impression that’s hard to shake. Before then he didn’t feel any concrete emotion when he thought about the Devil. But in that moment he hated him. He hated him more than he hated anyone, including Azazel.

Then Lucifer told him that he knew Sam would say yes and he wouldn’t trick him into saying yes. That annoyed Sam more than it made him angry, because he could see how Eve did what Lucifer told her to do. Lucifer had a silver tongue; everything that came out of his mouth was poison, but his words were honey. He was the first temptation and the inventor of manipulation. He knew how to pull the strings.

Sam held onto his anger to keep from paying attention to what Lucifer was saying. That anger towards Lucifer kept him going, acting as a shield between his trickery and Sam’s will.

In a perfect world, a visit from Lucifer would make Sam angry and nothing else. This wasn’t a perfect world, and in spite of himself Sam found his anger dissipating to be replaced by curiosity. Curiosity is what killed the cat, and what got Eve to bite into that famous apple. It was the gateway to disaster. Lucifer was giving him forbidden information on the connection between Archangels and their true vessels. This was information he wouldn’t find anywhere else. Not in dusty old books, and certainly not on the internet.  
He couldn’t even gain this kind of knowledge from Castiel, and that was what made it so alluring to Sam. The fact that it was knowledge that no one else had. His pride was getting the best of him.

He knew this fascination was dangerous. If he became too obsessed, he might stop caring who the source was. The moment that happened, Sam knew he would have lost. He would continue seeking out contact. Even if that left him vulnerable to saying yes to Lucifer.

Sam felt disgusted with himself when he thought of this. At the moment his feelings were a confusing mess. No matter how he felt, he couldn’t say yes to Lucifer. There was still a chance they could win this thing. However slim that chance was.


	6. Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

Sam dragged his feet as he walked to the room he shared with Dean in Bobby's house. He wasn't sharing the room with Dean because Bobby had him locked up in the panic room. While this was to keep him from running off to Michael, his heart went out to him. Sam hated the panic room, but after Dean tried to run and see Michael for a second time, they had no choice. Dean was more determined than before now that it wasn't just Sam on the line, but Adam as well.

They met Adam about a year ago - well they thought they did. He had actually been dead at the time a ghoul had taken his place. This only happened because he was associated with the Winchesters. This was a bad thing for most people because they ended up dead. Of course, most people stayed that way. Adam was brought back by angels so he could be used as Michael’s vessel in their fight with Lucifer.

Sam had mixed emotions when he thought about this. On the one hand, he was glad they wanted to use Adam. It meant they would leave Dean alone. On the other hand, Sam also felt extremely guilty. He was an innocent person that had gotten dragged into the horrible mess that was the Winchester’s lives.  
But Sam knew that Michael and his goons would not give up on Dean that easily. Adam was most likely a placeholder until Dean said yes. His brother would not say yes this time, though. He could spout all his bullshit excuses about how Adam was just a kid that didn’t deserve what happened to him. At the end of the day, he knew his brother's desire to not leave Sam alone would keep Dean from saying yes, even if they weren’t on the best of terms.

Entering his room for the night, Sam decided to confront an issue he had been avoiding desperately. He had to think about why he kept allowing these conversations with Lucifer to happen. His hatred for Lucifer was not something he could put into words. But yet, he liked the fact that he was getting so much information from him. The saddest part about this was that he never tried to ask Cas about angels. It made him wonder if he only cared about learning because Lucifer shared the information first. Even though he appreciated it, he couldn’t allow that to hold him back. He had a job to do. Get rid of Lucifer and end the apocalypse.

“Like that’ll be easy to do,” Sam said.

“What will be easy to do?” A familiar voice asked from the corner of the room.

Sam jumped off the bed when he heard that. He turned towards the corner and saw Lucifer standing there. For a brief second, he wondered if Adam told Lucifer how to find them. He abandoned that thought because he doubted they knew who the other one was. That meant he had fallen asleep without realizing it. Another late night meeting was not what he needed right now.

“I have some news for you Sam.” Lucifer looked like the cat that got the canary.

“What is it?”

“I caught those pathetic humans who dared kill my vessel.”

It took Sam a moment to understand what Lucifer was saying. When he did, his mouth dropped. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that Lucifer had actually found them. It was horrible that they had killed him, but Sam hadn’t really cared in the end. He'd been too busy worrying about other things. Such as the apocalypse and his relationship with his brother.

“How did you even find them?” Sam quickly tried to think of who could have possibly told Lucifer.

Lucifer got an odd look and his face and didn’t answer. As he took a step towards the door, Sam took a step forward to cut him off. At that exact moment, the temperature dropped sharply. He tried to tell Lucifer to leave, but couldn’t speak properly. His teeth were chattering too much. He immediately jumped under the covers, trying to warm himself up. Fortunately for Sam, Lucifer turned to face him and the temperature started rising.

In an attempt to get warm, Sam rubbed his hands up and down his arms. He was hoping the heat created by the friction would warm him up. When a hand grabbed his shoulder, he jumped and tried to pull away. That didn’t work though, because the grip on his shoulder was too tight. Sam was surprised when he felt heat coursing through his body. While he knew angels could heal people, he didn’t think warming them up counted. Also, the gesture came from Lucifer so he was suspicious as to why he would want to do that.

“What was that for?” Sam asked as soon as he could speak.

“You’ll have to be more specific Sam.”

“The whole freezing temperature thing.” Sam jumped off the bed to get away from Lucifer.

“I felt an angel outside your house and decided to get rid of it,” Lucifer said in a dismissive tone.

“Wait...you felt an angel outside? But how could you get rid of them?” Sam desperately tried to keep from hyperventilating.

“Sam, when I appear in your dreams, I am physically here. This means our meetings are not inside your head like a normal dream. They are happening in a separate dimension.   
The landscape takes on the appearance of the last place you saw. This is to help keep you relaxed, but there is a backdoor that you can exit through when you are ready to leave. Since your soul is connected to my grace, I can interact with your environment, but only in a limited capacity.”

“But how can you interact with my environment?” Sam raised one eyebrow.

“Even though I inhabit a mortal vessel, my powers exist on a different plane than the one you live on. So I can only interact with beings that in some way interact with this other plane. That includes other angels, reapers, and demons.” Lucifer moved to sit against the headboard and crossed one ankle over the other.

“Right. So what does that have to do with the temperature dropping.” Sam ran his fingers through his hair and pulled slightly.

“The drop in temperature was a physical representation of my grace. You only noticed it because we are currently in this separate dimension. If we had been standing on the mortal plane, it would not have been as noticeable. This can be said of all angels. There is a difference in intensity of course. The more powerful the angel, the easier it is to notice what is happening.” Lucifer now had his arms crossed behind his head.

“So you wouldn’t happen to know why that angel was here, would you?” Sam knew it was a stretch but he still had to ask.

“No, I could only send him away. I couldn’t speak with him because I was not there.”

Sam sighed. He dropped onto his bed, not even caring that Lucifer was still lounging on it. Even though he learned a lot from Lucifer, he was always left with too many questions. He also had to deal with the fall out by himself, which made him hate these late night meetings even more. What he hated the most about this, was how badly Dean would react. It just made his life one big mess. When one thing went well, something horrible happened to counteract that. Sam liked to call it the Winchester luck, which affected anyone that came into contact with them.

At that moment, the famous Winchester luck kicked in and the lights in the room started flickering. Sam buried his face in his hand when he felt the temperature start dropping. He couldn’t help but wonder if this was going to become a regular occurrence. Sam was prepared for the disorienting feeling of changing positions but kept his eyes closed. He decided to feign sleep to avoid discussing what happened.

“What the hell is going on Sam?!” This was asked angrily by a voice Sam was not expecting to hear.

Opening his eyes, Sam saw Dean standing not too far away, Bobby gripping his arm tightly. Cas was standing next to the bed. He was not expecting to see Adam standing just behind Bobby. He briefly wondered why Dean was in his room and not in the cage.

"Wait, why's Dean here?" Sam looked directly at Bobby, avoiding his brother.

"Cas felt an archangel's power outside and went to go check on it. I checked on this idjit in the panic room. He was still there but then Cas yelled down somethin' 'bout the Devil and he went runnin."

“Hey Sam, I’m talking to you!” Dean yelled at the end of Bobby's sentence, trying to get Sam’s attention.

“You have to be more specific Dean,” Sam said, already dreading this conversation.

“What Dean means to say is that we want to know why you have been conversing with Lucifer.” Castiel gave him a disapproving look.

“Did you know another angel was here as well.” Sam said this as a way to change the topic of conversation.

Judging by the looks he was getting, Dean and Bobby knew nothing about it. He didn’t bother to look at Cas, but he was surprised by the look on Adam’s face. He immediately looked away when Sam caught his eye, and he guessed that Adam knew something about it.

“So Adam, how about you tell us what you know?” Sam was happy to have everyone’s attention on someone else.

Adam looked like a deer caught in headlights as everyone else turned to face him. He obviously had not been expecting to be involved in this conversation. He didn’t answer though, and instead turned to glare at Sam. In response to his glare, Sam shrugged and continued to stare. He hoped the silence would wear Adam down and he would start talking. That was his strategy, but Dean seemed to have other plans.

“What is Sam talking about?” Dean got right up in Adam’s face.

“I have no idea.” Adam rubbed his eye and avoided looking at Dean.

“Look kid, I’m not stupid. So why don’t you drop the act and tell me,” Dean spat out.

“Fine, I’ll tell you, just back up!” Adam exclaimed, clearly uncomfortable with the lack of space between them.

Sam watched as Dean stared Adam down. It wasn’t until Bobby grabbed his arm that Dean backed away.

“Right, so here's what happened. Some angel named Zachariah appeared to me tonight. He told me that I would be able to see my mother again if I agreed to be Michael's vessel.   
When it came down to it, there was no choice, I need to see my mother again. Zachariah said I all had to do was tell him where I'm at, so I described the place. After I woke up, I went outside to meet him. Just as he showed up, the temperature dropped. He was stopped by some invisible barrier when he tried to reach me. After a few minutes, Zachariah told me to walk over to him. Just as I started forward, he disappeared. That's when Cas showed up and sent me back inside."

Sam wanted to laugh when he heard that. His guess was correct. Adam really was just a trap to get Dean to say yes. He also doubted Adam would have seen his mother after it was all over. Dean looked like he was going to murder Adam and Bobby didn’t look much better. Cas, though, turned to face Sam.

“Sam, how did you know another angel had been here?”

“Lucifer told me.” Sam hung his head, avoiding everyone’s eyes.

“You were talking to Lucifer? What the hell were you thinking?” He heard Dean ask that.

“He obviously wasn’t thinking at all,” was Bobby’s muttered answer.

“Lucifer showed up in my dream. He did something that made the dream colder. When I asked him what he did, he told me he got rid of Zachariah. Then the lights flickered and he disappeared. Once he disappeared, I woke up. End of story.”

"You can't expect me to believe that." Dean said sharply.

“Yes, I do.” Sam looked up as he said this.

Dean didn’t respond and gave Sam a disappointed look. After a few seconds, he turned his back and walked out of the room. He noticed the look Bobby gave him as he left. It was the look he always got when Bobby wanted to talk. Once they were gone, Cas and Adam left as well.

Sam spent a minute wondering if he wanted to go back to sleep that night. But the chance that he might see Lucifer again made the decision for him. He went down to the kitchen; he would need a lot of coffee to stay up all night.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

“Sam. You wanna talk about what happened?” Bobby sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee.

“Not really.” Sam stared at his cup of coffee and wondered if he could drown himself in it.

“Well, do you wanna tell me why you’re talking to Lucifer.”

“It’s not like I wanted to!” Sam shouted.

“Sam.” Bobby gave him a hard look.

“Sorry. Look it won’t happen again.”

“You know we’re just worried about you.” Bobby put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

Sam avoided his question and instead asked about Dean. Bobby told him that he put Dean back into the panic room for the night. Cas was on guard duty to make sure he didn't try to make a run for it and call Michael. At that moment, a loud shout from the basement drew Bobby out of the kitchen. Sam shook his head. Hopefully Bobby and Cas would let Dean out of the panic room soon. When the shouts got louder, Sam stood up. He figured he should probably go help them out.


	7. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

Sam entered the living room just as Adam dropped the news paper. “Something in the paper you didn’t like?” He asked while giving the paper a mournful look. It was spread all over the floor, in a way that made putting it together more time consuming than a rubik's cube.

“There was this headline article about human sacrifices happening in some town in Indiana.”

“Did it say how they were being killed?” Sam searched through the pages trying to find the article. When silence reigned for longer than a minute, he stopped what he was doing and looked up. Adam’s face was pale. His mouth open in shock.

“Are you okay?” The newspaper forgotten as Sam stood up.

“How...how can you be so calm about this?” Adam asked, giving him a wide-eyed look.

It was in that moment that Sam remembered he was a civilian. No experience with hunting and none of the cold logic that came with it. After everything he had seen, it took a lot to make Sam truly horrified. Unfortunately, human sacrifice was not one of those things.

“He’s a hunter boy. It comes with the territory. Now clean that paper off my floor.” Bobby’s stern voice broke the silence. As Sam picked up the paper, Bobby went to his desk, cup of coffee in hand.

“Hold on, that doesn't make any sense!” Adam exclaimed, hands clenched into fists.

“You wouldn’t understand, since you ain't a hunter. Something like that is on par with the normal case a hunter sees.”

Sam cut into the argument the two were having.“Look Adam. As a civilian, you’re going to have a different perspective on something like this. You just see the deaths. We see this as being connected to something supernatural.”

Adam took one last look at the both of them before walking off. Sam found the story Adam mentioned and settled down to read. He could hear Bobby mumbled something under his breath, but Sam just left it alone. If Bobby wanted to share, then he would share.

The story in the paper went into a bit more detail than Adam gave. It was happening in a town called Muncie, Indiana. The bodies were found laying on altars with their throats slit. The police believe the people were being sacrificed, but didn’t give many details. So they wouldn’t know what they were dealing with exactly until they got to Muncie, Indiana.

“Any idea what’s causing the bodies to drop?” Bobby asked from next to Sam.

“No. The police said the bodies were found laid out on an altar, throats slit. They were surrounded by candles, and some strange symbol on the cloth they were found laying on. They also mentioned something about medical supplies.” Sam wished his laptop wasn’t so far away, because then he might have found some photos from the crime scenes.

“Did they say anything else?” Bobby asked, sounding annoyed.

“Nope, that was it.”

Bobby turned his back and mumbled something about Dean. Sam, even though he heard it, pretended that he didn’t. “What was that? It wasn’t loud enough.”

“I said go get your brother, ya idjit. I just let him out of the panic room this morning. He’ll probably be happy to hear about a case.”

Sam jumped off the couch. Without saying anything else, he walked outside. Dean was washing the Impala. With a grin, he yelled while waving the paper. Dean had a slight grin on his face as he called him over.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

The sun was just starting to drop below the horizon when Sam and Dean saw the distinctive flashing red and blue lights of several police cars. The three cars, and an ambulance -- seen only when they got closer -- , were sitting outside a warehouse. According to the map, the warehouse was five miles outside the town.  
Dean brought the impala to a stop a few feet down the road. They took a minute to find id’s in Dean’s box and then made their way to the warehouse.

“Hey, who’re you?” The police officer that called to them was standing at the edge of the yellow police tape.

“Agents Fury and Rogers. FBI” Dean pointed to himself and then Sam as they both flashed their badges.

“What’re y’all doing here?” The officer asked, his southern accent coming through.

“Our Boss sent us here. We were heading into town when we saw the commotion.” Sam replied.

“Right. Well y’all just head on in. Ask for Sheriff Lawson.”

“Thank you.” Sam nodded to the police officer as they moved under the tape.

They ended up making it into the warehouse without being stopped. Inside the warehouse was a different story. There were a lot of people running around, taking pictures, and having loud conversations. Sam took a minute to look around, and ended up spotting who he thought was the Sheriff.

This guy was standing closest to the altar, without the dead body. Everyone at one point seemed to approach him before running off to do something else. Once Sam pointed him out, they fought their way through the crowd of people.

“Hey, can I help you?” Sheriff Lawson asked with his hand on his gun.

“Agents Fury and Rogers. FBI.” Dean introduced them again.

“Let me guess, you’re here to take over my crime scene. All cause the FBI's claiming jurisdiction.” The Sheriff took his hand off his gun as he said this.

“So what do we have here?” Dean asked, not replying to what the Sheriff said at all.

“Well this is our fifth body in the past week and a half. From what we can tell, the body was laid on this altar, and the throat was slit.” The Sheriff gestured to the altar as he described the body.

The altar had the remains of candles sitting along both sides of the table. The cloth underneath was soaked in blood, making it hard to tell what the original color was. Sam could just make out some symbol on the cloth. He took a step closer and just barely made out a rod with a snake wrapped around it.

“That symbol has appeared on every cloth at every scene we’ve been to,” Sheriff Lawson said from next to Sam.

“Anything else pop up more than once?” Dean asked, taking his turn to observe the symbol.

“Yeah, this,” Sheriff Lawson grabbed a bag from one of the people standing by. Sam saw cloth bandages, cotton balls, and gauze inside the bag.

“Medical supplies? Why?” Dean asked, with squinting eyes and a furrowed brow.

“We haven’t figured out yet.” Sheriff Lawson said, though Sam didn’t miss the glare he shot to one of his officers nearby.

Dean and Sam took their leave, with a promise of access to police files and the bodies the next day. As they walked, Sam tried to figure out the meaning behind the symbol. He knew it was the symbol used by hospitals, but he couldn't remember where it came from originally. After trying, and failing, to remember its origins, Sam put the mystery aside for the time being.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

“Have you found anything on that weird symbol?” was the first question out of Dean’s mouth when he came back from the police station, a manilla folder in hand.

“Yeah, it’s the symbol of the greek god Asclepius. He’s the god of healing. From what I could find, people used to pray to him to heal the sick. However they sacrificed roosters then, not humans.” Sam recited dutifully, giving the basics of what he’d learned after hours of research. “Find out any new information from the police?”

Dean snorted. “No. Getting anything from Sheriff Lawson was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Pointless and a waste of time.”

“Right. Guess we’ve got to see if anyone in this town has been sick recently.” Sam said, and despite his words, he made no effort to move from his seat.

“Not gonna find anything if you just sit there.” Dean, as always, gave his advice with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

“Course I can,” was Sam’s reply as he turned back to his laptop. He heard Dean give a sigh from somewhere behind him.

Rubbing his eyes and yawning, Sam pulled up the website for the towns newspaper. If anyone had died from a terrible illness, he would find something there. He also had to see if anyone had some terrible illness, but gotten cured mysteriously. Names would help them find out who might have formed this cult of Asclepius.

So he started with newspapers a year old and started reading. Sam soon found what he was looking for in a newspaper dated six months ago. What he found was pretty strange. Apparently, a group of about 20, relatively healthy, middle-aged people had gotten sick. With multiple diseases, all of them deadly. The diseases they had were Yellow Fever, Typhoid Fever, Measles, Encephalitis, Diphtheria, and TB.

From what he could tell, the twenty people had at least three of the six diseases. Some of the six shared the same combination of diseases. The doctors had been shocked when they all arrived at the hospital. While missing one of these diseases during testing was uncommon, it would have been hard to miss if someone had any of the three. This was due to the fact that all of them had unique symptoms.

Sam quickly wrote down the names of the twenty people and what each of them had. He then decided to see which one's ended up dying, and which one’s ended up getting cured mysteriously. Anyone that died got crossed off the list. Those that didn’t die had their name circled. It took a while, but he finally had seven names that were circled, with the other thirteen were crossed out.

There were three females, Susan Jones, Alexandra Layton, and Julie Whitman, and four males, George Underwood, Frederick Howell, Eric Santos, and Steve Riley. He carefully rewrote each name and if they were cured yet on a separate piece of paper. Susan Jones was the first to be healed about five weeks ago. Though it happened three days after the first dead body was found. The next three to be cured were Eric Santos, Alexandra Layton, and Steve Riley. All of them were cured three days after a body was found.  
Sam could only assume that a family member of one of the sick people killed each body. So all he had to do was find out who killed this body to find out who would get healed next. First, he needed to find out possible candidates. So, using the wonderful powers of Google and the phone book, he found out who their immediate families were.  
All of them were or had been married at some point. Most of them had children, but Susan Jones was the odd one out. With a bit of digging, and several phone calls, he was able to find her brother. Who had several children of his own. One of his sons had come to town to be with his Aunt while she was sick.

Sam had just decided to find addresses when his stomach rumbled. Checking the time, he was shocked to see it was 1 pm. Not only had it been hours since he had last eaten, but Dean hadn’t disturbed him once. His brother couldn’t sit still long enough to do hours of research. He was a hands on kind of guy. Dean would much rather be out doing something then reading long internet articles or books.

That meant he would either find something to do or bombard Sam with questions. The latter meant research took twice as long. None of this meant that he couldn’t do the research himself. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have gotten anything done when during that period when Sam was off at Stanford and he was working his own cases.  
It all boiled down to the fact that Sam loved doing the research. So Dean let him, and would then go out and talk to people. It was what made them efficient hunters, and they usually solved cases a lot faster than a hunter working by themselves. So yes, Sam thought it was quite odd that Dean hadn’t bothered him.

A quick glance at his phone showed no missed calls. Meaning Dean had either left a note or hadn’t called yet. There was no note to be found in the hotel room, but the impala was still sitting outside. He could almost believe Dean went into town on foot, if their motel wasn’t five miles away. Sam decided the best thing to do would be to call him, but his brothers phone went straight to voicemail. So he called his brother’s other phones. His worry climbed higher and higher as each phone went to voicemail.

The sound of beating drums outside drew Sam’s attention. He couldn’t see anything from the window, but when he stuck his head outside, the sound stopped. This went on for several minutes, until he finally just gave up. He tried to muffle the sound by covering his ears but that failed. He then tried to drown the sound out by running the shower, blaring the tv, and blasting music, but none of it worked.

Sam had just decided to use cotton balls as makeshift earmuffs when it stopped. He could hear a ringing in his ears during the silence that followed. He was just wondering if his hearing would be permanently damaged when something hit him over the head. The last thing he saw before everything went dark was a man with bright red hair in a military uniform.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

The first thing Sam noticed when he woke up were the loud voices arguing from somewhere nearby. The next thing he noticed was the bed he was laying on. His eyes opened to a dark room and could just barely make out the shapes of the furniture. Sam jumped off the bed when he saw the door, and immediately regretted it when his head began to spin.  
He collapsed onto the bed and waited for the room to stop spinning. Once he felt better, Sam stood up slowly this time. He took about two steps from the bed when the door opened. It revealed the man he saw just before he passed out.

“Well look at this, you’re awake. And here I was hoping I’d get to have a little fun.” The stranger had a frown on their face, which didn’t look at all convincing.

“What do you want?” Sam ground out, trying to ignore the pain radiating from the back of his head.

“Me? I want many things. For right now, I want you to come with me. Or you could continue resisting,” the man said, a large grin on his face.

Sam took another two steps forward. “Well go on, lead the way.”

The man, whose name Sam still didn’t know, led him down a hallway in what appeared to be a hotel. They passed a couple of empty rooms, all of which looked nicer than the motels they stayed at.

“Why am I here?” Sam asked as they got into the elevator.

Instead of getting an answer, the guy just grinned and pressed the button for the first floor. The rest of the ride was spent in silence. Sam was trying to figure out who this guy was and what he wanted. The kidnapping only happened after he took a break from research. So the guy could be trying to keep him from finding something out. Even if he was, Sam couldn’t figure out how the drumming noise fit into all of this.

After exiting the elevator, the man lead him across the lobby and to a set of double doors. The man gestured for Sam to go first, and he cautiously pushed open one of the doors. A long table was situated in the center of the room. There were five people seated at the table, Dean included, and two people standing at the head.

“Ahh Ares, so nice of you to join us.” One of the people sitting down greeted Sam’s escort as he rushed to sit next to his brother.

“Oh come now Asclepius, you know I would never miss something this good.” Ares said with a shark-like grin.

“Of course Uncle.”

“Enough of that. Some of us would like to start the meeting.” This was said by a beautiful Indian woman wearing a red dress.

“Meeting?” Dean asked.

“Yes meeting,” the man standing at the head of the table said, “ We need to keep this angel war from happening. You Winchesters are our bargaining chips.”

An older man seated at the table snorted. “I told you before Baldur and I’ll tell you again. Using these Winchesters isn’t going to work. We should just leave these angels to solve their own problems.”

“Do you really believe they’re just going to leave us alone Odin? I didn’t take you to be naive old man.” Ares sneered.

“I would hold your tongue boy.” Odin snarled, hands clenched into fists as he stood from his seat.

“Well bring it old man, lets see what you can do.”

“Enough!” The woman shouted, glaring at the two gods.

Sam recognized all of the names as different gods from either Greek or Norse Mythology. Meaning they were currently stuck in a room with a bunch of Pagan gods. Whose goal was apparently to try and stop the angel war that was brewing.

“Asclepius? Are you the one healing those sick people? The ones with the weird combination of diseases?” Sam asked, bending forward to get a good look at the man.

“Yes I am.” Asclepius wore a soft smile as he answered Sam.

“So if you’re a healer, why do they have to commit murder for you?”

“To get you Winchesters to come to the town,” Ares said, “We needed something that would really catch your attention. What better way than to have a couple interesting murders?”

Sam wasn’t quite sure what appalled him the most. Hearing what Ares just said, or knowing that Asclepius, a god of healing, went along with it. Logically he knew that people died all the time. It was just the way the world worked. It didn’t mean they got to play at being judge and executioner, to decide who lived and died.

“...And that’s why no one worships you bastards anymore!” Dean’s shout echoed in the now quiet room.

The conversation had apparently continued while Sam was thinking. Based solely off the looks Dean was receiving, he assumed it might have been a tad insulting.

“You’re right Winchester. The people do not worship us as they once did. So we look for any opportunity we can find. If that means, as you humans say, ‘manipulating the weak’ then we will do it. Otherwise we would not be able to survive.” The woman said, fire shooting from her palms.

“Kali, enough.” The man next to her put his hand on her shoulder.

“You're too soft Baldur.” Kali said, pulling away from him.

“Why don’t we go remind these pathetic angels whose been around longer. They don’t have the right to decide what happens to this planet.” Ares slammed his hands on the table.

At that moment, a cold gust of wind blew through the ballroom. The lights flickered just as the doors slammed open. Sam turned his head. Lucifer was standing in the doorway. He seemed to have more burns than the last time and it made him appear more grotesque. Sam couldn’t help but wonder if his vessel felt any of the pain, or if his soul was pushed too far down.

After inspecting his face, Sam found his eyes wandering down the rest of Lucifer's body. He felt horrified when he saw all the blood covering his torso. To be covered in that much blood, he would have had to do some serious damage to whoever he had decided to kill. Sam wasn't surprised to feel anger and disgust, all aimed at himself. He always seemed to forget what Lucifer was capable of until it smacked him in the face.

"How did you get here, angel man?" Ares asked, a hint of a grin on his face.

' _He's grinning, even though Lucifer's going to kill him. What's wrong with this guy?'_ Sam thought, not even doubting who would be winning this fight. A tug on his arm pulled him from his thoughts. A quick look to the left showed it was Dean who had grabbed him. He said something that got lost in the sound of an elephant thundering past them.

Sam watched, entranced, as the elephant lowered its head. It looked like the elephant was going to skewer Lucifer with his tusks. Lucifer had an amused smile, the one you give children when you're humoring them, and snapped his fingers. Sam dived under the table, just barely avoiding being covered with blood and elephant guts.

"Ganesh! How dare you?" This was yelled out by Asclepius. Sam hoped the healer wouldn't do something stupid, like try to get revenge and attack Lucifer.

"Oh, was that it's name? I had no idea such uncivilized beings actually had names." Sam just barely kept from groaning out loud. There went any hope he had of them walking out of there without more blood being spilled.

"Uncivilized? If I were you, I would be treating my elder's with respect." Aries reply was met with a silence so quiet, it filled Sam with a sense of dread. He started to move from under the table, to see what was going on, but Dean stopped him.

"What's this? Cat got your tongue? Or has the little angel man finally realized he's outnumbered." The sound of a gun being loaded momentarily confused Sam. He didn't have a gun, and he knew Dean didn't have one either. Then the loud bang that is unique to a gunshot filled the room.

Sliding out from under the table, Sam saw Aries was the one with the gun. Looking at Lucifer, he saw blood slowly dripping from the chest of his vessel, at the spot where the heart is located. Sam watched as the wound closed. A scar and some burns were all that was left behind and he wondered why that happened.

In the blink of an eye, Lucifer was in front of Aries, arm through his chest. With a smile that was all teeth, Lucifer slowly pulled his arm out. Aries tried to put up a fight, but nothing came of it. Lucifer put an end to all his struggling by pulling his beating heart right out of his chest. It continued to beat for several minutes, but it stopped just as the light left Aries' eyes.

Sam couldn't take his eyes off of the heart in Lucifer's hand. Not even the wounded cry that left Asclepius's mouth could drag his eyes from that heart. It wasn't until Lucifer dropped it to the ground, that Sam paid attention to his surroundings. He was just in time to dodge Asclepius's flying body. There were only three pagan gods still alive, Odin, Baldur, and Kali.

With how easily Lucifer was picking them off, he didn't think they would be alive for much longer. He and Dean could probably sneak out unnoticed with all the fighting that was going on. Looking over to Dean, he pointed to the door. As one, they both started inching towards the door.

"Now Sam, you weren't thinking of leaving, were you? We haven't even gotten to talk yet." Lucifer's voice was entirely too close to Sam for him to be comfortable.

"You shouldn't take your eyes off your opponent." A crack of thunder and the strike of lightning where Sam had been standing only seconds ago had his head spinning. He could just make out Dean calling his name, but Sam was too busy trying to control his racing heart. Along with trying not to think about the fact that Lucifer saved his life.  
The rest of the fighting passed in a blur. Sam only pulled himself together when he heard Gabriel's voice. While Sam would readily admit that he didn't like the archangel, he would take Gabriel over Lucifer any day.

"Dean, why don't you and Gigantor come on over here." Gabriel called.

"You can take Dean, but Sam's staying." Lucifer started to move towards the Winchester brothers, but Gabriel stopped him.

Sam, with some help from Dean, got to his feet and they quickly made their way to Gabriel. He was surprised to see Kali was alive. He thought for sure that Lucifer would have killed her. Since she was alive, he assumed that Gabriel had helped her. Which made him wonder how Gabriel had even found them.

Gabriel ended up grabbing all three of them. With a muttered 'Hold on tight', they were gone from the hotel. The last thing Sam saw was Lucifer, covered from head to toe in blood.


	8. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

Sam had assumed that once they left Indiana, that would be the end of that case. Normally that would have been the end, but not this time. Browsing the internet the next day, from a cafe in some small town he couldn't remember, he found more situations matching the one in Indiana. It had been happening in a variety of towns all across America. Some were small town hospitals that weren't equipped to handle these kinds of diseases.

Dean, surprisingly, was the one that insisted they check it out. Sam could only hope this meant he wasn't obsessing over Gabriel. The day he rescued them, Gabriel had taken the brothers back to their hotel room. Dean had demanded all kinds of answers. The archangel didn't give Dean what he wanted, only telling them he would help them trap Lucifer but had to take care of some business first. That was three days ago, and with no contact, Sam could tell his brother was getting anxious.

So this case would serve as a wonderful distraction. Dean had wanted to jump feet first into the case, but they couldn't figure out how the cities were being chosen. Which meant they had no idea where the site of the next disease attack would happen. Sam was the one who suggest they talk to Bobby. He was hoping the older hunter could help them figure out where to go next.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

Three hours after Sam and Dean arrived at Bobby's found every available space in the living room covered with maps and books. The maps were being used to figure where the disease bomb would be dropped. The books were so they could figure out what kind of creature was dropping the bombs. It wasn't easy, though, because they weren't quite sure what it could be. All they knew was that this thing somehow played a role in a bunch of people contracting different diseases.

"I'm gonna run and get food. Who wants what?" Bobby pushed away a map as he said this. Dean started shouting out a list of food, pie included, before Sam suggested they write it down. Twenty minutes later, Bobby had a list of what to buy for Sam, Dean, and Adam.

It had been surprising when Adam offered to help. Sam wasn't going to turn away help, and gave Adam his laptop. A lot of Bobby's books had small letters, which made them hard to read at times. He figured giving the kid his laptop would let him help, without hearing too many complaints about the reading. Adam and Sam were working on figuring out the creature, while Dean and Bobby poured over maps.

No progress was made on either task, so Sam was grateful they would be taking a break. Walking away from the research meant they could go at it again with a clear head. As Dean mumbled something about checking on his Baby, Sam turned to Adam. He was resting his head on the table, the laptop pushed off to the side. Sam barely kept from laughing when he saw that. He used to do that all the time at Stanford when he was working on a research paper in the library.

"Do you guys always do this?" The question was a little distorted because of how Adam had his head positioned.

"You mean the research?" Sam replied, taking a seat across from Adam.

"Is it always this in-depth?" Adam answered his question with a question.

"Yes it is," Sam crossed his arms over his chest, "we have to be thorough to make sure we know what we're dealing with and how to kill it."

Adam lifted his head and rubbed his hands across his face. His eyebrows were furrowed and his bottom lip was caught between his teeth.  
"Are your cases normally like this?"

Sam couldn't hold back a laugh at that. "No, they're normally not like this. This is quite strange compared to some of the other cases we've had."

Adam's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Sam laughed again, miming for Adam to close his mouth as he did so. Sam finally calmed down a few minutes later. It wasn't even that funny but he couldn't help himself. With everything that was going on, it was hard to find reasons to be happy.

Plus it was nice to see someone have a normal reaction to his job. Some days he forgot how odd hunting can be. Sam had gotten so immersed in the job, that he could only classify a case with people contracting multiple diseases at once as strange. He sighed at that thought. It was moments like this that reminded him he would never have the normality he really craved.

"So what happens when you figure out what's causing all this trouble?" Adam's question brought Sam back to reality and away from lost dreams.

"We kill it, plain and simple. Well more goes into the plan than that, but that's what it all boils down to." The horrified look that made its way onto Adam's face had Sam jumping from the table. He had forgotten for just a moment that Adam wasn't a hunter. Or a hunter-in-training for that matter. For a moment he wondered how Jess would have reacted. When he pictured her looking as horrified as Adam did, he shoved the image out of his mind.

"Hey Bobby, you need help with that?" Dean's call from outside gave Sam something to focus on other than his daydreaming.

Sam held the door open so Dean and Bobby could enter the house without any trouble. The moment the bags were on the table, Dean pounced. Going on about pie, and how he hoped Bobby got the right kind. He shouted in triumph when he found the pie, and groaned when Bobby took it.

"But Bobby..." Dean whined, trying to grab the pie.

"Meal first, pie later."

Dean pouted for about thirty seconds before digging through the bags again. Food in hand, he took a seat at the kitchen table. It didn't take much longer after that for everyone else to acquire their food as well. As conversation flowed, Sam found his mind wandering back to this new case they found. There was something he was missing, he knew it. It was that feeling one got when they had a word on the tip of their tongue, but just couldn't recall the word.

If he could only figure out what piece he was missing, he could figure out the source behind all the chaos. He also knew there was something familiar about this case. It wasn't that they encountered this before. It was the whole tip of the tongue feeling.

"Hey Sam, you eating that or what?" Dean asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"Oh, uh yeah. Just thinking."

"Right." Dean went back to his burger. His concern for Sam's eating habits was not something he had expected. If anything, Sam was more concerned about Dean's eating habits.   
He hadn't been eating as much as he usually did for the past month and a half. This thought caused Sam to pause, fork halfway to his mouth. If he remembered his dates correctly, then they had that case with Famine about a month and a half ago. Who just happened to be one of the Four Horsemen. Which meant...

Sam dropped the fork into his salad bowl and raced over to his laptop. Ignoring the yelling going on behind him, Sam opened Google and typed Pestilence into the search bar. Clicking the first article he found, he quickly read through it. The article only confirmed his suspicions.

"Pestilence." Sam shouted, happy he had figured out the culprit behind the disease bomb. They really needed to come up with a new name for what was happening to these poor people.

Blank looks meet his declaration, instead of the joy he was hoping for. "Pestilence is the one making these people sick."

"Pestilence, what's that?" Adam asked.

"Not a what, but a who. He's one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse." Sam said, correcting him like a teacher would in a classroom.

"At least we know how to take the son of a bitch down." Dean crowed, his grin all sharp teeth and jagged edges.

"Wait. so you're killing the Four Horsemen? How's that even possible?" Adam had that wide-eyed look again.

"Doubt we can actually kill 'em. We're just stopping them from causing trouble." Bobby replied gruffly, his lips just barely curving into a smile.

Adam looked between the three of them. His arms were crossed over his chest and he had an eyebrow raised. "And how do you do that exactly?"

Dean crossed over to one of Bobby's bookshelves and grabbed a box. It was a plain box made of cherry wood. The kind of thing someone would pass over if they were looking to take anything from the house. He opened it and pulled out a gold ring.

"You see this? This is War's ring. We stopped that bastard by taking this." He held the ring up for a couple of seconds before dropping back into the box.

"We also have Famine's ring as well." Sam added.

"So why can't you kill them? If they're inhabiting bodies, shouldn't they be able to die?" Adam asked.

" Course we can't kill 'em idjit. The Four Horsemen aren't just creatures going around causing chaos. They're literally the things their names suggest. Meaning they'll only die off when they things they represent die off. And let me tell ya kid, Death ain't gonna be dying anytime soon." Bobby searched his bookshelf before pulling a large tome off one of the higher shelves. He thrust the book at Adam, saying something about kids these days and not reading enough.

Adam opened his mouth, most likely to reply, but Sam shook his head. It was better to not start something with Bobby when he was this worked up. It wouldn't end well for anyone. Bobby would never hit them, but Sam and Dean always hated seeing him disappointed. So they always strived to keep from doing that, though they didn't always succeed.

"Since we know who's responsible, why don't we work on figuring out where he'll be going next?" Sam grabbed Dean and dragged him over to a map. He ignored Dean's cries for pie. They had more important things to do.

The four of them spent the next couple of hours going over the places Pestilence had already visited. Unfortunately, they were no closer to finding a pattern for his hospital visits. As far as they could tell, the locations appeared to be random. Even though he wanted to give up, Sam decided to go over the list of hospitals again.

He reached out to grab his laptop and pulled it closer. He heard Adam make some vague noise of protest, but he made no effort to grab the laptop. Sam typed the name of the first hospital into the Google search bar. Instead of looking at Google maps, he decided to read some information on the hospitals website. From what he could tell, it was a pretty small place. When he checked out the names of the doctors on staff, he found out that none of them had the knowledge to deal with the diseases their patients suddenly got.  
Feeling curious now, Sam opened a new tab and typed the name of the latest hospital into the Google search bar. This hospital was a lot larger than the first one Pestilence hit. He quickly found what information he could about the doctors on staff for the hospital. Some quick research showed that they had a couple of doctors who knew how to deal with these diseases. That most likely meant on an individual basis, and not say, TB, Measles, and Yellow Fever all at once.

"Hey Winchesters, I've got some news for you." Gabriel said, --appearing in the room without any warning-- in that cheerful tone of voice he used most of the time.

"What kind of news are we talking about?" Dean leaned back in Bobby's chair as he asked this.

"Oh you know, just a plan to help you take care of Lucifer." Gabriel waved his hand dismissively, like he wasn't saying something important at all.

"So does this mean we'll kill that son of a bitch for good?" Dean asked, a huge grin on his face.

"No, it'll just trap him back in the cage where he came from." Gabriel replied, sitting down on an empty chair.

"What's the plan?" Sam asked, sitting forward in his seat. Half filled with hope, knowing Lucifer would be taken care of, and half filled with dread, because then he would never be able to talk to him again.

"You'll need to do two things. The first is open the door to the cage with the rings of the Four Horsemen. Then you have to somehow trick my brother into going back." The grin Gabriel normally wore was absent, giving him a serious look they didn't see often.

"Wish a plan could be easy for once." Sam mumbled, running his hand through his hair.

"Well, we're currently making plans to take down Pestilence. You wanna help us find him?" Dean asked, almost pushing the map at Gabriel.

"I could, for a price." Gabriel pulled a Twix bar out and started munching on it.

"What kind of price?" Bobby asked, leaning forward with his arms crossed on the table.

Gabriel just grinned. "Don't worry, it won't be too bad. I help you go after Pestilence and you agree to not hunt any Pagan gods for a year."

"Wait, why would an angel want to help Pagan gods?" Adam asked.

"Gabriel masqueraded as a Pagan god for awhile." Sam replied.

Dean responded with a loud 'No' at the same time Sam agreed with Gabriel's proposal. No one said anything after that. Sam knew Dean wasn't happy about it, because Sam wasn't happy with this at all. He didn't exactly want to do this. However, they needed the help if they wanted to find Pestilence. Plus the deal would be better than asking for help from that demon Crowley. Not that Sam wanted to see him either. So he would much rather accept help from an archangel/Trickster than a demon.

"Look Dean, would you rather get help from Gabriel or Crowley?" Sam asked.

"Fine, but I'm not happy with this."

"Awesome. So I'll go find out what you need. I should be back by tomorrow afternoon at the latest." With a grin and a wave, Gabriel disappeared from Bobby's living room.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

Sam laughed, chasing after the Golden Retriever in front of him. They were running through a field, with the sun shining and clear skies. Suddenly, a crack of thunder had the dog barking uncontrollably. Sam had only just caught up when the sky opened up and rain started pouring down. The barking turned to whining and then the scene changed. They were no longer standing in an open field, but a house.

Standing in front of him was Lucifer. He wasn't covered in blood, like the last time Sam saw him, and was wearing clean clothing. He had a towel in one hand. The dog growled when he made to approach him, so Sam stepped forward and grabbed the towel. Dropping down to dry the dog off, he tried to keep from yelling and screaming.

"What do you want?" Sam asked, keeping his head down and eyes on the Golden Retriever.

"I just wanted to check up on you."

"Check up on me?" Sam almost thought he had misheard him.

"Yes. I wanted to make sure those _gods_ didn't harm you in any way." Lucifer spat out the word gods with the same hatred that he said the word human.

Sam wasn't sure if he could listen to this. Yesterday, Lucifer had murdered a room full of Pagan Gods. He wasn't upset that Lucifer had killed them. Being upset about that would make him a hypocrite, and he would have killed them had he gotten the chance anyway. Even so, he _was_ upset, just not with Lucifer. Seeing that had reminded Sam just what Lucifer was capable of.

With everything going on between them, Sam had managed to not think about the Apocalypse and Lucifer's role in that. Seeing the ease with which he'd killed them had been a wake up call for Sam. No matter how much he may be coming to like Lucifer, he couldn't be his friend. Not when he could murder him without a second thought. Which is what would have happened had he not been his true vessel.

"Leave." Sam whispered, standing with his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

"What?" Seeing Lucifer standing there, head tilted and asking stupid questions didn't help improve Sam's mood.

"I. Said. LEAVE!" Sam shouted, distorting the image of Lucifer, the house, and the Golden Retriever.

As everything melted away, Sam realized he had seen that dog, house, and field before. They were all things and places he had encountered when he ran away to Flagstaff. It was a place that Sam hadn't thought he would ever see again, even in his dreams. As he got out of bed, he wondered if that meant anything. The fact that he dreamt of the place he ran away too, at a time when everything was starting to become too much to handle.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

"You sure this is the right place?" Dean asked for the fifth time.

"Yes." Sam replied. They had been parked outside the Genesis Medical Center East hospital in Davenport, Iowa for the past ten minutes.

Gabriel had showed up around two a.m. yesterday to give them Pestilence's location. He had seemed shocked to see Sam awake, but didn't comment on it. Instead, all he did was hand over a piece of paper. Sam thought it was suspicious, but let him leave without a word. Looking at the paper, he saw the name of the hospital, where it was located, and the alias Pestilence was going by.

"Look, why don't we go in Dean. Adam's got his instructions so it'll be fine." Well Sam didn't really believe that, considering what happened the last two times they went up against Horsemen. What he wanted to do was get this done and over with.

Dean sighed, glaring at Adam through the rearview mirror. Adam had casually asked if he could come along. He wanted to experience their work first hand, without being murdered that is. Dean had been against it, citing all the reasons why it would be a bad idea. Starting with Adam's lack of experience and ending with the fact that he could die anyway. In the end, Sam had agreed to it.

He wasn't sure why he agreed to Adam's suggestion. It might have been the way he held himself, or even the look of determination in his eyes. Whatever it was, Sam agreed and then Bobby said something that might have been an agreement as well--or he could have been calling them all idjits, he couldn't tell. Dean had stared at them like they'd grown second heads, but reluctantly agreed. His one condition to Adam coming along was that he had to be given the least dangerous job of the mission.

That had been harder to come up with than Sam expected. He managed it though, and told Adam he had to stay in the car and wait for them. If they weren't back in two hours, then he was to call Bobby or Cas. Sam also decided to leave Adam with Ruby's knife. It would probably make things with Pestilence easier, but he wanted the kid well protected. The knife was his best bet, as long as no angels showed up.

"Right lets go. Remember kid, two hours." Dean shot Adam one last look through the rearview mirror before stepping out of the car.

"When we get inside, we're looking for Dr. Green." Sam said as he and Dean approached the hospital. It looked so ordinary from the outside. He wondered if Pestilence had already released that weird concoction of diseases among the poor, unsuspecting people of the hospital.

Sam couldn't say for sure what he expected to find when they entered the hospital. He had mentally prepared for the worst, so he was surprised to see that everything was calm, well as calm as a hospital can ever be. He and Dean were able to find out that no one had contracted any strange combination of diseases, which was a plus. Though things got more complicated when they tried to find Pestilence.

Dean had flirted with one of the nurses on the first floor and found out Dr. Green was on the fourth floor. When they got there though, someone else told them Dr. Green was on the eighth floor. They then spent the next half an hour chasing Dr. Green around the hospital before taking a break on the third floor.

"Dr. Green, after you're done here Meredith wants you on the sixth floor." A male voice said from a room nearby.

Whatever Pestilence said was too quiet for them to hear, but they patiently waited to see who left a room next. They didn't have to wait long before a male left a room halfway down the hall. Sam and Dean pretended to be reading a sign in front of them, arguing about what floor their Uncle was on. The nurse passed them by, and once he was around the corner, they hurried down the hall.

As they got closer to the room, Sam started coughing uncontrollably. His chest hurt and the farther he walked, the harder it was for him to catch his breath. Dean didn't seem to be faring much better, judging by the harsh coughing sounds he was making. Neither one stopped though, and Sam had to lean against a wall so he wouldn't fall over. A crash had him looking over at Dean who appeared to have fallen to the floor.

Sam slowly made his way to Dean and bent over to help him up. Which was a mistake when he felt light headed. He managed to fight it off and helped Dean stand up. Between the coughing, the tight feeling in his chest, and the black spots he was seeing, Sam wasn't too sure what happened next. He vaguely remembered leaning on Dean as they walked. After that, he distinctly remembered entering a hospital room with a doctor inside. Then he saw the floor rapidly approaching before everything went black.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

The first thing Sam noticed upon his return to consciousness was the noise; which sounded like people talking. He struggled to open his eyes when he realized Adam was one of   
the people speaking. It wasn't easy, because his eyelids felt very heavy. Once his eyes were open, he watched as Adam brought Ruby's knife down, somehow managing to cut off Pestilence's ring finger.

No one moved as the finger and ring fell to the floor. It bounced once, before rolling across the floor, blood spilling from the wound. Pestilence got angry at that and Adam dropped the knife in favor of putting a hand to his chest as he coughed up blood. Sam weakly struggled to his feet as he watched Adam drop to his knees.

Adam didn't seem finished though, because he grabbed the knife and weakly stabbed Pestilence in the stomach. He just gave Adam an odd look before disappearing. It seemed strange, that he was gone just like that. Though Sam wasn't sure how he felt about Adam being the one to finish the job. While he had ended up saving them, he did put his life on the line to do it. It was a stupid risk, since he could have died again.

"What the hell was that!" Dean looked upset as he stomped over to Adam.

Adam avoided Dean's gaze and stared at the floor. "Part of me wanted to help, but part of me wanted to die as well."

"What..?"Of all the things Sam had expected to hear, that wasn't one of them. Judging by Dean's dropped jaw, he wasn't expecting that either.

"Look, while you guys are my brothers, you're not my family. I...I just want to see my mother again. That's all I want." Adam's voice broke on that last sentence. Sam had the horrible suspicion that he was going to start crying.

Thankfully he didn't because Sam wasn't quite sure how he would have helped him. He did shoot Dean a glare when it looked like he was going to make some unnecessary comment. They didn't need Adam getting more upset than he already was. Instead, Sam suggested they leave the hospital and call Bobby on their way out. Dean jumped at the suggestion to call Bobby and pulled his cell phone out.

That left Sam with Adam. Before he could say anything, Adam stiffly handed him Ruby's knife and rushed from the hospital room. Sam sighed, and followed after him. He caught up with him at the elevator, Dean a couple of steps behind. Nothing was said as they left the hospital and made their way to the car.

It wasn't until they entered the car that Adam finally spoke. "Can...can you just forget I said that? Please?"

"How in the hell are we supposed to forget something like that?" Dean asked as he started the car and raced from the parking lot.

No one said anything. The answer, of course, was that they wouldn't be able to forget. Instead, as they raced to Bobby's house, they all made a silent agreement to not speak of it. Well Sam wouldn't say anything as long as Adam didn't try to actually kill himself.


	9. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

The days following the situation with Pestilence were spent trying to contact Gabriel and keeping an eye on Adam. While Gabriel never showed, Adam seemed quiet and withdrawn. When Bobby tried to ask what happened, Sam and Dean always changed the subject. They figured Adam would speak when he was ready. When he finally broke his silence, it was to tell them he wanted to live on his own.

"You sure about that?" Bobby asked gruffly.

"Yeah. You guys are nice and all, but I can't stay here." Adam stood in the living room with a bag full of clothes. "I have a feeling that staying here will mean getting dragged into more life or death situations."

"Look kid, if you leave, we can't keep any angels from getting to you." Dean sounded concerned, which surprised Sam just a bit.

"I'll take my chances."

They all tried to convince him to stay, giving him different reasons for why leaving would be a bad idea. No matter what they said though, Adam refused to stay. He said he wanted nothing to do with whatever was happening with the angels. Eventually, Bobby convinced him to let him help him out. When Adam agreed, Bobby got him set up with a fake id and called in some favors to get him an apartment.

"C'mon kid, I'm gonna drive you to your new place." Bobby walked out of the house, not even bothering to see if Adam was following.  
Adam took one last look at Dean and Sam before racing after him. As Sam watched him go, he hoped he would make it out of this whole mess alive. He deserved to have a second chance to live, since it was his relationship to the Winchester family that got him killed in the first place. This just gave them another reason to come up with a way to get Lucifer in the pit as fast as possible.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

Sam started shooting Dean concerned looks around mid-morning the day after Adam left. Dean had seemed really agitated and hadn't moved from the couch for the past couple of hours. He was pretty sure Bobby had noticed as well. The only one who hadn’t was Dean - he seemed preoccupied with staring at his beer. That had started at 9 am and it was now 2 in the afternoon. The bottle was still full and Sam was sure it was too warm to even drink. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bobby get up and start walking over to Dean. To do what, he would never know. Gabriel appeared at that exact moment.

“Michael didn’t happen to take some of your blood, did he Dean?” Gabriel asked, not even bothering to say hello.

Everyone waited with bated breath for Dean’s response, but all he did was glare at the bottle he was holding.

“Look Winchester, I don’t have time for your moods. He was either here or he wasn’t.” Gabriel snatched the bottle out of Dean’s hand, finally gaining his attention.

“Well Michael ain't here, so you can leave now.” Bobby’s answer only got him a glare from Gabriel.

“And what if he did?” Dean asked.

“You know, I normally hate being wrong but I would have made an exception this time.” Gabriel said.

“What’s so important about Michael having Dean's blood anyway?" Sam asked, wondering why this could be important at all.

Gabriel didn't respond right away. Instead, he dropped onto the couch and stared at the ceiling. From Sam’s perspective, it looked like he was trying to read the answers of off the ceiling. But he was most likely trying to figure out how to respond. Hopefully. Sam could never be too sure with Gabriel. While he had chilled out since his confrontation with Lucifer, it didn’t mean his personality would do a complete 180.

“Have you ever wondered how I got my vessel?” Gabriel appeared lost in thought, connecting dots none of them could follow.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Sam asked, miffed that Gabriel hadn’t answered his question. He was also hoping this would get the conversation back on track. Gabriel going off on a tangent reminded him to much of Lucifer. Every time he had a conversation with that particular archangel, he had some urge to tell Sam a story. Which never had anything to do with the conversation--at least at first. Beating around the bush was something Lucifer liked to do.

“It has everything to do with it Gigantor.” Gabriel had a smirk on his face, briefly dropping his mellow mood.

“If it’s so important, then tell us the damn story.” Dean snapped, still in a bad mood.

“Right, after I ran away, I needed a vessel. My own true vessel hadn’t been born yet, so I was constantly changing bodies. This was because of the life expectancy of humans but also due to the power of my grace. It wasn’t too much of an issue until I became a demi-god.”

“Wait...I thought the vessel couldn’t die from natural causes if you were possessing it.” Sam interjected.

“They can’t, but that doesn’t mean I can't feel the body breaking down. It’s not like we preserve them. If that happened, then we wouldn’t have to worry about destroying vessels.” Gabriel rolled his eyes as he said this.

“Right.” Sam’s mind conjured an image of Lucifer’s face, vividly picturing the burn marks he had.

“Now, on with the story. Most of the pagan gods only have one vessel. Some do switch it up sometimes. Once I realized this, I had to find out how they did it. I had to be discreet with my questioning, but I eventually found what I was looking for.”

“And what was that?” Dean was the one who interrupted Gabriel this time.

“A ritual to make a permanent vessel.” Gabriel said smugly.

“How would that even work?” Bobby asked, a look of disbelief on his face.

“You start it off by making a golem out of clay. To make sure it holds, the pagan god would have to infuse it with their powers as it was being molded. Since I'm an angel, I had to change up the ritual a bit.”

“And how did you do that?” Sam asked, with vague ideas forming in his head.

“I had to mix the blood of my true vessel in with the clay, and since I was using blood I didn't need they didn't have to consent at all. It took a lot of trial and error to figure that out. Didn’t think it would work until I got to test it. As you can see, there were no problems.” Gabriel got up and twirled around, showing off his body.

“So if Michael has Dean’s blood…?” Sam couldn’t even finish his question.

“It means he can make a more permanent vessel for himself.” Gabriel confirmed.

Sam dropped his head into his hands. This was not something they had planned for. Their entire plan to get rid of Lucifer took into account that the final fight would never happen. There was still a slim chance that Michael would put off the fight until Lucifer had his true vessel. Sam prayed that would happen. They needed all the time they could get to acquire the last ring of the Four Horsemen. But since they still didn’t know where he was, that made things difficult.

“What I don’t understand is how Michael found out about this ritual.” Bobby, always the voice of reason, seemed to say what everyone else was thinking.

“He may have found out about it from me.” Gabriel avoided looking at anyone else as he said this.

“And why the hell would you tell him!?” Dean jumped off the couch and got right in Gabriel’s face.

Sam watched as Gabriel snapped his fingers in Dean’s direction. One moment he was fine, and the next he was on the couch tied up. Another snap gave him a gag to keep him from talking.

"It's not like I told him on purpose you fool. I'd been having a conversation with someone else and he just happened to overhear." Gabriel dropped onto a chair that appeared from nowhere. He freed Dean with a sigh, acting like it was such big deal for him to do this.

"So what you're saying," Bobby said, interjecting before Dean could start a fight, "is that we need to come up with a way to get Lucifer in the cage and fast."

"Well, I might have an idea." Sam added, cutting off what Gabriel had been about to say. It had only been a half formed idea since Gabriel had first told them how to get rid of Lucifer. He had been reluctant to mention it, but it looked like he had no choice now. "I'll say yes to Lucifer. Then I'll try to overpower him and throw the both of us in the cage."

"What the hell Sam?" Dean looked horrified at that suggestion. "I ain't letting you do that, no way."

"Well do you have any better ideas?" Sam started pacing, to agitated to stay still.

"No, but that doesn't mean I'll let you do this!" Dean yelled, making his way to Sam.

Gabriel left his chair and got between the two brothers. "Guess it's time I mentioned I had a new plan."

"What'd you mean, 'new plan'?" Dean narrowed his eyes as he stared at Gabriel.

"Kali and I came up with something." Gabriel said, pulling out a piece of candy.

"Kali, that's a Pagan god." Bobby stated, watching as Gabriel popped the piece of candy into his mouth.

"Yup, sure is."

"What makes you think we're gonna agree to work with _her_?" Dean had his arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face.

"Cause it'll mean that Sasquatch over there won't have to say yes to Lucifer and jump in the cage." Gabriel looked smug as he said this, knowing he'd said the magic words.

"So what do we have to do?" Dean asked, arms dropping to his sides, a grin appearing on his face.

"Dean, I'm not so sure about this." Even though they had gotten his help before, Sam was reluctant to actually work with Gabriel. Mostly because he still didn’t trust him after all   
the shit Gabriel pulled in the past.

“Oh come on Sam. If it’s between working with a Pagan god and keeping you safe, or having you jump into the cage, I’m gonna make sure you stay safe."

"I wouldn't go agreeing to his plan just yet ya idjit. We're not even sure if it'll work." Bobby interjected from where he was standing.

"So would you rather have Sam jump in with Lucifer?" Dean asked, spinning around to face Bobby.

Bobby sighed heavily. "Course not. So what's this plan of yours?"

Gabriel grinned before moving to the table, motioning for them to follow him. Sam hesitated for a couple of seconds before moving as well. Once they had all joined him, Gabriel pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and laid it on the table. It looked to be some odd diagram, with several different scenes drawn on the paper.

The first one showed a figure labeled Lucifer standing not too far from a figured labeled Kali. The Kali figure had a bubble drawn around her with the words invisible written next to her. In the second scene, Kali stabbed Lucifer with a knife that had some odd drawings on it. In the final scene, they had some squiggly lines drawn around them with the words, 'we disappear at this point.'"

Sam just stared at the paper, wondering what it was.

"What the hell is this?" Dean asked, an incredulous look on his face.

"It's a drawing of our plan of course." Gabriel looked way too happy with that drawing.

"So, uh, what's happening in the drawing?" Sam asked, bending down to get a better look. He was hoping it would have some answers for him.

"Kali's stabbing Lucifer with a knife." Gabriel said this like it explained anything.

"And what's so special about this knife?" Dean asked.

"It's made in a similar way to an Angel blade."

"I thought you said you weren't going to help us kill him." Dean snarled when he heard this.

"Kali's not killing Lucifer. Angel blades, when made, are infused with the grace of an angel. But we're using Kali's own powers, not my grace." Gabriel snapped, glaring at Dean for suggesting they kill him.

"Okay. So what are the little drawings on the blade for?" Sam asked, still trying to make them out.

"That's where you guys come in Sasquatch." Gabriel's grin looked just a little too wide for Sam to be happy.

"We need to put markings on here that will drag both Kali and Lucifer down to Purgatory. We want you guys to help us figure out what exactly we need to put on there."

"Just how are we supposed to figure that out?" Bobby moved over to a bookshelf and started grabbing books as he asked.

"Well we've already got an angel banishing sigil, but we need to modify it so that both of them will get sent to Purgatory." Gabriel said, putting the diagram away.

"What's so special 'bout this Purgatory place?" Dean grabbed the books Bobby handed him, moving to take a seat on the couch.

"Purgatory is where all the things you hunt go when they die. Kali wanted revenge against Lucifer and this is the best way it could be accomplished."

"So what will you be doing?" Sam asked, hoping he wasn't just pawning his work off on them.

"Kali and I will be helping as well. I just thought it would go a lot faster if we had more people working on it. Now, get to work and I'll let you know if I find anything." With one last wave, Gabriel disappeared.

Sam walked over to the table where his laptop located. "Guess we better get to work then." With some mild grumbling from Dean, they started working.  
Work was postponed though, when Cas showed up at the door. Dean was all over him, asking him where the hell he'd been. Yelling how they could have used his help when they were kidnapped by Pagan gods or when they had to fight Pestilence.

“I had to catch a bus here.” Cas said.

“A bus? Couldn’t you just mojo your way over here?” Dean asked.

“I could not ‘mojo over’ as you said because my grace is low. It seems I have been away from Heaven for too long.” Cas stated bluntly, never one to beat around the bush - though Sam doubted he even knew what that saying meant.

“So what does that mean?” Sam asked.

“It means I am falling and there is a real chance that I might lose my grace.” Castiel said, a faraway look in his eyes.

As Dean got Cas situated, asking more questions, Sam stopped paying attention. Instead of worrying about his friend, he instead thought of Lucifer. He had been away from Heaven for much longer than Castiel and yet he seemed to have kept his powers. Sam wondered if that was because of the cage or if this had something to do with the Apocalypse. In that moment, Sam wondered what would have happened if Lucifer had lost his powers. Would he have become some super powered demon? Or would he have faded away in that cage?

The last thought should have made Sam happy. If Lucifer had actually faded away, so many things would have been different. Sam could have grown up with his family and lived a happier life. Instead, it made him sad. Which made Sam feel foolish because Lucifer was an archangel. No matter how much he pretended otherwise, he couldn’t understand human emotion, not really.


	10. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

Of course, finding a way to modify an Enochian sigil sounded easy in theory, but it was a lot harder to actually accomplish. Cas didn't believe they would be able to just modify the sigil, like Gabriel wanted, but would have to combine it with some other sigils instead. That was the easy part. Since Kali's plan was to stab Lucifer with the knife, that meant they would need the sigils they used to do two things. One- tie Kali's life to Lucifer's; and two- make sure the Angel Banishing sigil didn't accidentally send Lucifer to Heaven.

"Cas, why is accomplishing part one so important?" Sam wasn't quite sure what that would accomplish.

"All monsters go to Purgatory when they die, Kali included. Tying her life to Lucifer's insures he will go as well" Cas replied, not looking up from the notebook Bobby gave him.

"Then why the hell do we need to worry 'bout part two?" Bobby asked.

"I assume Gabriel wants to make sure Lucifer does actually go to Purgatory."

That conversation was the longest one any of them had over the next couple of days. Every waking moment was spent on trying to find the right combination of sigils to ensure their plan worked. Cas ended up coming up with multiple combinations to accomplish part one, and multiple ways that accomplished part two. What he couldn't come up with was a way to ensure any of the sigils would end up working together.

Dean was the one who eventually pointed out that the angel banishing sigil was always drawn with blood before it was used. So for all they knew, the missing link could be Kali's powers or they would have to cover it with her blood. All that did was spark more research since Bobby was pretty sure they were creating some new kind of ritual. He also pointed out the fact that the missing link could be multiple things, not just one.

"That's it, I'm done." Dean got up from the table and walked away.

"But Dean." Cas called after him, standing up from the couch.

"Ah let him go. We've been at this for two days, we could all use the sleep." Bobby stood as well.

Sam waved Bobby off when he turned to him. He was in the middle of researching how to kill Kali, because it might end up being useful. All he needed to do was write it down, so Bobby and Dean wouldn't have to dig through his laptop to find it. Sam fought back a yawn as he looked for some paper in the mess on the table.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

Sam opened his eyes, not even realizing he had closed them. He was shocked when the clock on his laptop read four in the morning. Not because it was so early, but because he didn't know how long he had been sleeping. ' _Ugh, no more sleeping at tables._ ' Sam thought, rubbing the back of his neck and stretching.

"Hello Sam." Sam jumped from his chair at the greeting, spinning to face Lucifer. He was standing in the doorway to Bobby's living room, hands in his pockets.

"Dammit, what are you doing here?" Sam was too tired to deal with Lucifer. He really wished his meetings with Lucifer didn't happen in the room's he fell asleep in. Or places he   
recognized. At least it would be a bit more obvious he was dreaming. Maybe.

"Oh, I think you know." Sam noticed the burns on Lucifer's face had spread and more of the facial tissue was showing. That, combined with the lack of any noticeable facial expression gave him a grim look.

"No, I really don't. Why don't you tell me?"

"Michael has a vessel. Not his true vessel of course, but a vessel all the same." Lucifer took two steps closer. "I'm sure you know what that means."

Sam felt his jaw drop. If Lucifer meant what he thought he meant..."The Apocalypse." Oh they were screwed. So, so screwed.

Lucifer moved so he was close enough to Sam to touch him. "All you have to do is say yes Sam."

Sam laughed bitterly. "And condemn the human race? No thanks."

Lucifer put his hand on Sam's arm, a parody of a smile on his face. "Come now Sam Winchester, do you really care about the human race? Do you?"

Sam turned his head away so he wasn't facing Lucifer. He would be lying if he said he cared for all of humanity. That didn't mean he wanted his family to die, and they would if he said yes to Lucifer. He didn't have to be psychic to know that.

"Does it matter? I still won't say yes." Sam pulled his arm out of Lucifer's grasp.

“Of course it matters Sam. I want you to make a decision for yourself, not because it’s what everyone else expects.”

“Fine. I’m not saying yes because of my family.” Sam took a step back, not even flinching as his chair fell to the floor.

Lucifer didn't respond right away, gazing around the room instead. As he did, the temperature dropped. Not by a lot, but just enough for Sam to feel a slight chill in his bones. "Just when I think I have you all figured out, you do something to surprise me."

"What, did you think I'd just abandon my family?" Sam wrapped himself up in one of Bobby's afghan's. He wondered if he would ever get used to the cold that manifested around Lucifer.

"I wasn't expecting you to stand by them. After everything they've done, after all the betrayal, and the distrustful glances, and you still stand by them. What have they done, Sam Winchester, to earn such loyalty?" Lucifer laid a hand on Sam's cheek as he asked that question. At this moment, he looked confused, and not the fake confusion he normally wore. It was an honest to god look of confusion.

Sam put his hand over Lucifer's, for once actually pitying the archangel in front of him. It was times like this that he was reminded that angels didn't understand human emotion. They could learn what they felt like and how to mimic them from their vessels, but they didn't truly understand them. There were moments though, when he saw them displaying an emotion that was foreign to them.

"They have my loyalty because no matter what we've gone through, and no matter what has happened, we're always there for each other. While my brother and I argue a lot, and while we haven't trusted each other like we should lately, we're still looking out for each other. At the end of the day, I know that Dean will have my back and he knows I'll have his."

Lucifer frowned and crossed his arms, pulling off the disappointed face very well. "You know Sam, I thought we had something. I truly thought you understood."

"Yeah, well you thought wrong." Sam was only half lying through his teeth as he said this. In all honesty, he completely understood how the archangel standing in front of him felt. 

There were days when he just wanted to say fuck it and walk away. When he wanted to stop caring about his brother. Today, today wasn't that day. So while Lucifer's new tactic would have worked on any other day, it wouldn't this time. That's because in a matter of time, he'd be rotting in Purgatory--forced to deal with Kali and the other Pagan gods.

Lucifer sighed, uncrossing his arms. "Well if you change your mind, meet me at Stull Cemetery tomorrow before noon."

"What do you mean?"

"Michael and I will be having our showdown at noon tomorrow." With one last smile - one that Sam swore conveyed some genuine feeling of affection- Lucifer left to the sound of flapping wings.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

"Look at this, Sasquatch rejoins the land of the living!" Gabriel's cheerful voice echoed in the semi-quiet room.

"Lucifer and Michael are going to have their big fight in tomorrow at noon." At this point, Sam didn't care if Dean was angry or upset with him. They had more important things to be worrying about.

"Well, guess it's a good thing Kali and I managed to finish that dagger then." Gabriel said that as if he were talking about the weather. Not something involved in a life or death situation.

"Hold on, if you finished it, why'd you need our help?" Dean yelled, and Sam wondered why all his interactions with Gabriel involved yelling at some point or another.

"In case we couldn't do it. Just be glad we included you at all."

"You two can argue like a married couple later. We've got to start packing." Bobby said, ignoring the glare Dean sent him.

"Packing?" Gabriel asked, head tilted to the side- and Sam really didn’t think this was the time to be thinking about how that reminded him of Lucifer.

"Course, you didn't think we wouldn't go to see this finished, did you?" Bobby raised one eyebrow, the look on his face clearly saying Gabriel was an idiot if he thought that.

"Of course I didn't, but why do you have to pack anything?"

"We're driving, and no you can't just use your angel mojo to beam us there." Dean spoke up before anyone else could.

So they spent the rest of the day packing, catching up on sleep, eating, and deciding on when to arrive. That ended up taking the longest to do. Sam and Dean thought they should get there early, so they didn't have to deal with Michael as well. Bobby reminded them they needed to get there at the same time as Gabriel and Kali. Gabriel said he would go talk to Kali. As soon as he had an answer, he would be back.

As they waited, Dean paced, not wanting to miss Gabriel’s arrival. Bobby took phone calls from other hunters. Hunting didn’t stop just because the Apocalypse was just around the corner. Cas was standing behind Bobby’s desk, and Sam decided to clean their guns. It was just some busy work to pass the time. Soon enough, Gabriel was back and told them they should arrive early.

"Just don't go near the cemetery until I tell you too." Gabriel said.

"Why?" Cas asked, head tilted and eyes narrowed.

"Cause I'm keeping an eye on the cemetery and the moment Lucifer appears, I'll let you guys know. You enter, keep Lucy distracted - with the help of yours truly -, and then BAM, Kali strikes. All before Michael shows up."

"Fine, where should we wait at?" Sam asked, since it would make sense to have a meeting place. That way Gabriel didn’t have to go searching for them.

"I don't know, just somewhere not near the cemetery." Gabriel bit out before leaving.

~~00~~00~~00~~00~~

Since it was about a five and a half hour drive from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to Lawrence, Kansas, Dean decided that meant they needed to leave at 4 a.m. He wanted to make sure they had a big enough time gap before noon to take down Lucifer. Everyone agreed, reluctantly, to that. The drive up was quiet as they sped along the highway.

Once they reached Lawrence, they went to a diner for breakfast. Sam and Dean were the only ones who managed to eat. Bobby stuck to coffee and Cas had nothing, still angel enough to not require food. By 9:45 a.m., they were parked on the side of the road, just outside of Lawrence. From there it would take them about fifteen minutes to reach the cemetery. As they waited, Dean blasted his music. Sam, though, tried to ignore the nervous feeling in his stomach. He couldn't believe it was almost over.

Sam wanted to be happy. He did. Unfortunately, Murphy's Law tended to have a special clause for the Winchesters.

A flutter of wings alerted them to Gabriel's arrival. He didn't even have to say anything as Dean started up the Impala and drove back onto the road. With a grim smile and a salute, Gabriel left as quietly as he arrived. A short time later, Sam saw Lucifer surrounded by shrubs and wooden crosses when they entered Stull Cemetery. He turned at their approach, but didn't appear surprised when he saw who Sam brought with him.

"So I see you changed your mind Sam. Though I'm surprised you didn't try for Death's ring."

Sam felt his eyes go wide and his mouth open slightly. They had dropped that plan, but still, how did he know?

"Oh Sam, how could you believe I wouldn't find out. I had several demons keeping an eye on the Horsemen." Lucifer spread his hands out slightly and grinned. "You didn't really think I would leave them unmonitored, did you?"

Sam couldn't respond because he had thought that. With how little he thought of demons, Sam thought he wouldn't really care about what happened to the Horsemen. Besides, it's not like he'd said anything before.

"So you're saying you cared about what happened to 'em?" Dean asked from somewhere next to Sam.

"Of course not, but I did have to make sure they did what I wanted." Lucifer responded before spinning around. "Is this really necessary, little brother?"

"Oh come now, you didn't really think I'd let you do this?" Gabriel was leaning against one of the wooden crosses, angel blade hanging at his side.

"I don't want to kill you Gabriel."

Gabriel laughed and moved to circle behind Lucifer, "Who said anything about killing?"

Lucifer pointed to Gabriel's blade as he moved to keep Gabriel in front of him. "Then why do you have your blade out?"

"Oh this," Gabriel held up the blade, "This is just a distraction."

The word distraction had barely left Gabriel's mouth when Kali seemed to come from nowhere and stab Lucifer.

"Now I'll get to spend an eternity getting my revenge." Kali's grin was all teeth as she twisted the knife.

That seemed to be some kind of signal because they both started glowing. A shout from next to him drew Sam's attention from the two of them. Dean was panicking, grabbing frantically at Sam's body. When he looked down, he saw his body was glowing brightly. He saw Dean gesturing wildly at Gabriel, no doubt yelling at him for screwing up the plan, just before he disappeared in a flash of light.

The next minute he was crashing into the ground. Sam stayed still, waiting for the throbbing pain in his body to disappear before he tried looking around. He was surrounded by trees with Lucifer and Kali fighting nearby. Sam cursed his bad luck. Now he was stuck here for God knows how long and with no escape plan.

Sam turned at Kali's shout, and watched as her body disappeared. _'Oh great, now I'm stuck with Lucifer.'_ Sam thought, not completely happy about this. After all the crazy stuff that'd happened in the last couple of months, he wouldn't call Lucifer his friend. However, he wasn't his enemy either. He was an acquaintance that Sam just barely got along with. He didn't get much time to think about this because a bunch of people were coming out of the trees.

_'Not people.'_ Sam corrected himself. They looked like people except for their mouths. Some of them had their jaw's opened so wide, they covered a good portion of their faces. They also had extra rows of very sharp teeth and they also had forked tongues. Which left Sam wondering just what the hell they were.

"Leviathan." Lucifer bit out, moving to stand in front of Sam.

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> AN: So this is not only my first ever Samifer fic, but my first Big Bang fic as well. I hope you enjoyed reading the story. Just a heads up, but there will be a sequel to this story, so don't worry. You will get to find out what happens next, just as soon as I write it.


End file.
